This year's peach harvest from the Desert Gold tree in the backyard was our best one yet. The peaches were small, but really sweet and flavorful. After eating one, my son asked if he could have them all. (I made him share a couple with me and Dakota.)
More importantly, I managed to harvest almost all the ripe peaches before the were gobbled up by those darn squirrels. (By the way, allow me to recommend the Those Darn Squirrels!
books to parents of toddlers. They are really funny, smart and nicely illustrated.) I purchased some garden netting to protect my fruit from those fuzzy-tailed jerks, but didn't get a chance to put it up before the peaches ripened.Anyway, speaking of small peaches, does anyone know why that might be? Should I be watering more or less? Pruning or fertilizing more aggressively? Do I just need to wait until the tree is older and bigger, or is this the normal fruit size for this variety?
Even if the Desert Gold has small fruit naturally, I still highly recommend it for inland Southern California gardens. This tree has been the most productive of all the trees in my backyard orchard. Its neighbor, a Pink Lady Apple, has failed to make a single fruit in the last five years!
Pink Lady requires 300-400 chill hours which you might not be getting in S. California
That could be, but according to Dave Wilson Nursery, Pink Lady only needs 200-400 chill hours. I think we must get at least 200 hours under 45 degrees in the fall and winter. That's only 20-30 nights, right? I'm a little up a hill, so it definitely gets that cold, not in the daytime but certainly at night. Dave Wilson actually recommends Pink Lady for the Southwest, so hmmm... I suspect it's the soil or location that's messing up my Pink Lady apples, but I don't have enough fruit tree knowledge to figure it out yet.
Those peaches are beautiful.