Peaches, Plums and Grapes, Oh My!

As our calendar began filling and summer came to an end, I never found the time to do a post about peaches. Or plums. Or grapes. It was a good year for all three and we benefited nicely from our trees and vines.





Our Madison peach tree in particular, was a lovely surprise as many people, like my mother in law, lost their blossoms to the cold, wet spring, and then when the middle of summer got very dry, followed by the high winds of hurricane Irene, well, we thought we might not get much of a harvest. (And did anyone else have issues with leaves on everything turning brown and crispy on the edges after Irene? It doesn't look like tar spot fungus at all. Fortunately, with some rain, everything has been recovering. Grampie Tim theorized it was pollution the hurricane rained down on us, which is what I suspect as well. At any rate, it didn't seem to affect the fruit.)





Check it out--that was a half-pound peach and we had many just like it!






We ended up with seventeen pounds of peaches from our very young tree. Alex made twenty-four pints of jam with whatever was left after we ate some. Yes, you can grow organic peaches in Maine.

As for the plums, we had enough for a half-gallon of jam. And the grapes gave us more than twenty pounds, or sixteen pints of grape jelly and we still have more to harvest.




We also pulled the rest of the beets, cut some more broccoli and our neighbor gave us some rhubarb, too.




Not bad for a small urban garden and one late afternoon harvest. And oh, that peach jam on warm, fresh bread? Scrumptious.