The hard part is how to handle 3 boys who rip 10 peaches of the tree each day. William was pulling in bowls of raspberries earlier this season and just demolishing them in 1 sitting. 3 boys, 11,13,15 years old eat like crazy.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I like you, we all like you, but this is the problem with permaculture in general. Too idealistic with no raw data points (not saying that you personally should have the data, I know that's not what this channel is about, but in an overall sense). There is a reason professional market gardeners don't use a permaculture model. It is great for homesteading and not much else. It's never going to feed the world.
I agree with the few data points to compare to. The issues with a permaculture farm is high labour inputs. The world today is set up where this is a large drawback. However with automation coming, a lot of economists are worried about job loss. Stuff like universal basic income are thought to be a solution to that incoming problem. However maybe more labour intensive but regenerative farming methods can help there as well. Another major thing is that we compare permaculture models to extractive non sustainable industrial farming. It's like comparing 2 houses ability to heat themselves. One house has designed a passive geothermal system that just barely gets the job done, but it does work. The other house is burning the furniture and the flooring and is now burning the roof trusses to stay warm. And then we come and say, "see look, the geothermal method doesn't put out as much heat as that guy over there setting his dining room table on fire. The geothermal method is inferior."
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I should of been more clear when making the connection. I am not comparing permaculture with industrial ag but rather small market gardeners/whole system farmers who try to be regenerative. They have to be profitable and able to pump out food to meet demand. These are the true food pioneers who we should get behind. People like Richard Perkins. They can be the vessels we need to fix the broken food system. Permaculture, if to be taken seriously as a solution to the food crisis we face ( let's be real here and say that this is exactly what permaculture claims to be), must be measured accurately and honestly with raw data. Anything else is hot air. The current big ag food system is a ticking time bomb. We have less than 60 years of topsoil left if the latest UN reports are to be believed. We are literally turning the world into a desert. The solution is whole system farms that don't import materials. We need to start closing fertility loops if we are to seriously talk about regenerative agriculture.
Ah, peaches, "how do I love thee. Let me count the ways" . . . peach pie, peach cobbler, peaches and ice cream, upside down peach cake, peach jam, canned peaches, frozen peaches, peach ice cream peach yogurt, peach preserves, sliced peaches. Hmm, maybe it's time for you to open a roadside fruit stand. 🍑 🤗
My dog is very keen on raspberries too. Used to hide in the raspberry patch and you could see the canes move as he carefully picked them off himself. Nowadays, he's got us fully trained and we pick them for him. Just love the peach harvest there. Now that would not be considered a glut at all in my household, seeing as my husband eats tinned peaches every day. I can't get hold of 'Reliance' over here in Scotland, but there seems to be a couple of other varieties that may do just as well from Chris Bowers and Blackmoor nurseries here in the UK.
The same thing happened to my peach tree. It’s been so weighed down with peaches that I lost a large limb. My apple trees are loaded with fruit too. Everything is growing well. I have learned a lot from you. Today I made a fresh batch of biochar. Thank you for your videos.
I'm sure you probably already know this but just in case you don't you should thin your fruit on your fruiting trees. You may need to do it more than once. This helps prevent limbs from breaking but you also get bigger fruit.
Love the abundance of peaches 🍑 It’s kinda hilarious how many more peach trees are going to grow up to produce even more peaches 😳 🤣 You must love peaches and didn’t realize how much each tree would produce 😊
Yes, peaches are all my families favorite fruit. These don't go to waste! Many people also don't realize they can be grown this far north, so they also have a nice niche to supply if we ever wanted to sell these at the farmers market. You can only get about 20 cents per apple up here, but you can get over a dollar per peach. Also, because everywhere around here are monoculture apple orchards, th apple pests and diseases are through the roof. However for peaches there is really only peach leaf curl to deal with, and we are managing okay with that, ajd that disease doesn't kill the peach fruit, just some leaves. However there are really no peach pests up here, at least I have none with our native predator population we are establishing. Knock on wood!
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Our monoculture here is pears. Have you heard of the company Harry & David? They ship gourmet pears all around the world (lots of other gourmet foods too but they’re famous for pears). They sell 9 pears for 29.95 plus shipping (with some 1lb extra special pears selling for 5 for $29.95 😳 They are sold out early each year! I guess it’s the whole gourmet and status thing of sending family gourmet pears. The company has been around since the great depression but unfortunately 1-800flowers bought them a couple of years ago and the integrity of the company has gone way down hill. Peaches sell for quite a bit here too but I don’t think as much as your area. Your peaches and berries will make for healthy boys 😊
I've never heard of them. My dad used to buy a small box of pears from China when we were kids. So I know the idea. Crazy stuff. Slap the word gourmet on them and sell it for 5x.
Reliance! Out of UNH.!!! :D My neighbor...a UNH arborist professor!!...I'm in NH...on a family farm (grew up milking and farming) But, left the farm to be an accountant/economist. Returned decades later...to the sanity of the farm! Sorry...just a bit of northern NH pride here. :D And now following you (and others) to turn this land into food for as many as possible. Let the birds spread the wealth.
Dr. Meader! Responsible for the Meader Persimmon as well as Reliance peach. I grew up in Durham, did undergrad at UNH. Proudly growing both of these trees here in NH! :)
we actually had the same weather pattern in Finland, the early summer was terribly hot and dry, and now we have had constant rain... I'm sort of happy to get an extreme example right away so I know my well won't dry and that apple seedlings can survive the hardship with close to no watering.
I love your grape trellis set up how it has all of the grapes hanging down, and creates such a beautiful canopy! If you ever feel in the mood to do a video on how you setup and made that trellis, that would be incredible! Thanks again, I love your content!
Haha, I threw this up haphazardly. If I were to do it properly it would be sunken cement posts. But I wanted this one to be more temporary, and then planting trees on the backside, and hopefully transition to where the trees are the trellis in the future, and take down the wood one.
Sweet pups! Wow, nice peach harvest. Sure hope you have enough jars and lids if you preserve by canning. They seem to be a hot commodity. Your food forests are doing fantastic. Blessings🌿
I took a big bag of peaches home the other day, thanks!! The grapes look amazing, I can’t believe how many you have. We need to start grapes. Thanks Keith.
I'm also in Ontario, in the Ottawa Valley and we've had so much rain here that it's taken a tole on some of my plants. Out of 7 zucchini plants only two have actually produced and they're a third of the usual size, my tomatoes are behind too. But peppers and cucumbers are going wild. It's been a weird year for the garden here.
Thank you for the wonderful tour! I finally started my food forest this year. I am so excited to see it grow as yours has! Keep up the great work! I absolutely love your pond too! 😁
I feel ya. My nectarine tree had folded over onto my bedroom window... and pear tree just crazy ! Love it ! Though I don't want branches to rake if it can be avoided. Next year I'll thin the fruits more !
Hi, thanks for your vidéos. You inspire me to grow, and use the maximum of Space to produce in my small backyard of bungalow. Its my Year #1 and its bringing me lots of joy and feeling part of thé mouvement of protecting and restauring our land . For your amazing peaches… in which zone are you? I’m in zone 6a (Laval, near Montreal, Québec). Thanks again to give us so much good informations on fondamental things. I hope lots of people will join the mouvement and that our suburbains spaces will be transform and become source of food, sécurité, and opportunités to building relations on common goals. Common goals are powerfull to build relationships and strong communities. Sécurité, paix et amour, c’est ce que je souhaite pour tous, et la planète inclue! :)
AMAZING! AMAZING! AMAZING! Wow guys, awesome! So many peaches I can’t believe my eyes. And still much more to come. You’ll have to put up a stand at the road and let the kids make themselves some $$$. Happy to see everything coming together for you 5 years into this journey. I see your peach trees and where they broke and I feel for you man. Will you prune them down quite a bit this winter so they are more manageable? Maybe even reachable without a ladder. Would you ever do something like that. Maybe worth doing to one of your plenty lol. Omg Keith I love your gardens man. Everything looks beautiful. I wish I had the space like you. I’m not complaining because I have a great backyard but damn. Even just your giant compost pile with veg growing all around it, I just love it, food everywhere. So much fun. So much food. I love my little food forest more and more everyday I walk through it and do my chop and drop, and see my plants and trees exploding with growth this year, so much food to eat. It’s just such a great feeling to watch something you’ve created turn into something so beautiful. Amazing job guys. Keep up the good (hard) work. It’s the hard work that makes us feel good inside right. So rewarding. Happy gardening guys! Cheers Oh btw I planted the Reliance peach in my forest garden this year. It’s doing very well. It’s nice to know they’re doing so well in our province / growing zone. I can’t wait until mine starts producing anything close to as much as yours lol.
Thanks so much! Yeah this season is the first one where the food harvest has been so abundant I can't keep up. As soon as I'm done peach season we are going to head straight into apples and pears. I designed this thing with diversity to spread the harvest season out, and its so nice to see it working so well in that way. Enjoy your Reliance peach! It's my favorite.
The perennial food forests are showing their benefit this year. My perennial of producing age are producing like yours. That's the nice thing about too many berries. If there's more than you need, they become a bird attractant. Said birds, in my area anyway, also eat a lot of bugs!
i love the short vids that show the progress im an avid watcher keith. im so glad to see your figs produce fruit i wasnt sure they would if they die back every year just awesome
I am also worried about food scarcity. All of the farmers here in California have had their water cut off and that’s after so many of them have already stopped growing. We had an orchard but pulled out all of the trees several years ago because it was getting bad back then. I’m getting out of here and moving back to the middle and starting a food forest there first thing. Everyone should have a year’s worth of food put back. I’m worried about a famine.
Get a dew net. Very fine mesh you hang up, gathers moisture from the air and drips down into buckets. They use it in the Andes where it rains scarcely and it keeps people and plants hydrated enough to thrive.
I think there's a few strong individual food producers in southern California who probably have all sorts of wisdom about how to deal with the intense heat and lack of water.
We have the water scarcity problem in Chihuahua, Mexico. The above the law guys just pump with out caring. I've changed my expectations. I grow prickly pear, wild broccoli, parsley, pumpkins (we eat the whole plant except the root), grapes (mainly eating the leaves), rocket, purslane, malva, pomegranates, peaches, jujubes, figs, mulberries... all these plants are heat and cold tolerant and they all tolerate dry periods, and insect pressure. Compost what you can... tumble weed is usually available.
Keith, Quite the load of peaches. You'll be eating the preserved ones every day. Tell the missus that now she'll have a peaches and cream complexion....
Very cool! Also zone 4 in Minnesota US and just starting to put some fruit trees in the ground. I didn’t think I’d be able to plant a fig in the ground and have it survive. Do you know which variety the fig tree is? I’m guessing Chicago Hardy
I think I was told that thinning a third of the grapes would help those left to size up. But I'll have to wait till my grape vine is more mature to test this out so it's just food for thought 😉.
my father repeatedly sticks branches back on with some product, i think for grafts, and ties a string around it and generally leaves it there, so there are a few traces on the bark from when the string didn't decompose as quickly. he uses flat ropes with metal tighteners (like on plane seatbelts) to support it. i don't think i've seen his methods fail, so that could be an option to save the fallen branches
I've read a few different opinions on that. Some say it works and some say it introduces future weakness and disease spots in the tree, and that it's often better to just cut below the damage and have a fresh slate.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy i must say, we live in a dry-ish area (often warm+dry) so it's not humid, but near a swamp(?) so the water table is about 2 to 3m under ground, that may be why it has never failed. the trees are strong and grow well but they can't always resist the storms with high winds edit: the literal translation is "pond" but it's bigger and swampy on the edges, more like a lake but not quite
You food forest never fails to impress and inspire me. And that fig plant! I didn’t even know we could grow figs in Ontario. I have to source one out. Would it grow in zone 5b?
Yes definitely, but it may be like mine where it dies to the ground each year. The variety you want is Chicago Hardy, because it can fruit on 1 year old wood. This is important when the tree dies each year but the roots survive.
I bet those grapes would make some great compost. I think the birds could share a few with you I've heard that you should thin your fruit trees extremely early so that it gives you a nice yield every year, and if you don't you'll only get a nice yield every other year. Have you ever noticed that to be the case?
It's hard to say because this is the first year I have ever had to thin. I hope I did enough. I thought thinning more than half the fruit was a lot. In hindsight I should have thinned like 80% of it off. Crazy fruit set this year.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy well if next year you get next to nothing, then you'll know from then on you might want to strip off a lot more of the fruit very early in the season from them on. Good luck. I've been buying so much stone fruit lately, I'm going to end up broke. I finally bought a peach and a plum. I striped most all of the fruit from one tree and I don't think the other has any. I know I want roots not fruits the first year.
Do you have any experience with balancing out your grass sections and wood chipped areas so the grass doesn’t invade your food forest on the boundaries? I see you have comfrey around the edge, is that effective for you? I have Bermuda grass…lol. Thanks in advance, I am binge watching your videos so sorry if I missed it somewhere!
Hey Kristina nice to see you again here. I still have to watch your latest garden video... been so busy! Indeed, the comfrey wall was a trial this season and was a tremendous success. Our concern here is also Bermuda grass... it creeps right under almost anything then pops back up. The idea with the comfrey wall is that is shades from above, but also below the soil comfrey roots are INSANE, and block it there also.
We've been eating about 40 per day. I actually need to tell the kids to cool it because too much sugar can actually cause issues, even if it's sugar with fiber. My mother has made a bunch of peach cobblers and peach crumble. We have about 200 peaches cut and frozen. I'm going to probably pull another couple hundred tomorrow and I will can those ones. My wife also wants to make peach pie and jam, so we will try that also. The grapes are also going to be picked this weekend, and we are coming into tomato season. We have beans coming out of our ears. Send help!
Just had a friend bring me a bag of fresh peaches. I might put in a tree one of these years. Probably yellow flesh, freestone and hopefully, disease resistant and... cold hardy (Is that too much to ask?). I might go with a smaller rootstock, to ensure the trees don't get that big... I can't eat that many peaches haha. :) I think 6-8' tall and wide is the perfect fruit tree size for me. If I have a little more space I might let the trees get 10' tall. Wow, your liatris @ 5:16 looks fantastic! Our is just barely starting to bloom. I'm super impressed by the plants - I think I'm gonna buy a bunch of corms or starts next year and put them everywhere.
You can't rely on rootstock to keep your tree small, because "small" for a tree can still be 15' tall easily. The best way to keep a tree small is to prune it starting when it is young. I reccomend the book "Grow a Little Fruit Tree" if you want a really in-depth but easy to read book on keeping fruit trees small.
@@LemurBee I agree 100% on pruning to control tree size, but I think there is quite a bit of difference in terms of vigor to deal with between rootstocks. Luckily summer pruning can help a bit. Probably 1/2 of my trees are on full size or seedling rootstocks. Anecdotally, they seem to want to grow a bit more upright than my semi-dwarf trees. I'm just advocating to save yourself a little bit of headache (water sprouts / suckers / tying branches to better angles), even if it's fairly minor :) I've had full size fruit trees in my back yard before (numerous 30' cherries and 25' apples / pears), it's just not for me. 6-10' seems to be just about perfect. Way easier to keep a small tree small as you mentioned.
Hi! Thees peaches are great. I would never have dared to think of peaches in our climate, but after watching your videos I have now planned a peach tree. We are in zone 6b, so it doesn't actually get as cold in winter as it does where you live, but we are at 720m and there can always be a short frosts in April in some years. That is, when the peaches are in blossom. I wonder how that works for you. In your climate, there must still be frost in April, right? Do you have special varieties whose blossoms are particularly frost-resistant? Can you say something about that? And are your trees bushes or half-trunks? They look quite low. I'm a bit under pressure now because I have to buy now and decide on a variety. Unfortunately I don't have as much space as you and I have to choose well, otherwise I'll lose years.... Thanks and many greetings from the Black Forest.
Yes, what variety did you plant? We have reliance, contender, frost, redstar, and a few others, and they all tolerate late frosts and cold winter nights. We've had snow as late as mid May last year. We still got peaches, but it's hard to say if we got less because we had a CRAZY year the previous year, and the trees were just taking a season off (had hundreds vs thousands of peaches), or if the late snow and frost did them in. But overall, these varieties all work well. Most of my trees are pruned open-vase at waist height.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Thanks for the info. Not planted yet. I just decided this winter to try a peach after I watched your videos :-). I love them and my father had one (not here on the mountains but in the lowlands). Unfortunately I don't get Reliance in Germany and Frost is only available in Denmark, too. So I did a lot of research and probably will try Revita. This variety seems to be very frost tolerant and robust and is very much resistant against Taphrina deformans which is a widespread problem here.
Awesome, this is exactly the right approach. Your issues won't be the same as mine, and vice versa. Your ideal variety will then be different to mine. Great stuff!
Which province do you live in? I live in Manitoba where it can get very cold, and was wondering if it’s possible to grow peaches in this harsh climate?
Some super cold hardy varieties could work. I can't speak for sure though, I think it really depends on if you are zone 3 or 4. Zone 3 I would say probably not, but zone 4 could be okay. Try it and see.
Can you make a video on how you address black cluster fungus on the grapes? Do you bag all the clusters? Do you just not get it there in Ontario? Even the wild grapes here get it badly.
Yeah basically my peach pruning videos. I mention in them to cut back a few feet off the top each year, but then I didn't do enough this year because I wanted a large epic look. It's a pain to have the fruit up high, but I am going more for looks here, so I left them super tall. I should have cut them back more. That being said, last year these peaches gave me about 10 peaches each, so I had no idea what the bumper crop year would look like. These trees all tried to set thousands of fruit each (literally thousands). I pulled off between 50%-80% of the fruit in the spring, and thought that was enough. Apparently even that wasn't enough. Crazy.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy thank you very much for your reply, I will watch your peach pruning videos then, this year I did not get any peaches or apricots due to a late frost,; there is always fear involved in pruning as that sometimes seems to compromise a future harvest but as you shows that is not the case, I thank you again for showing your wonderful harvest, Best, dami.
So, I'm trying to figure out something. I'm in Kentucky now after moving from Tennessee. In Tennessee I lost lots of peaches from late frosts. So I was thinking that if I had varities with large amount of chill hours they would wake up later. Do you think that would be the case? It looks like the ones you have are high chill hours (I don't know on frost but it looks like it would be). I'd like to do something similar with plums as well.
Thats an amazing place you've created. I am renting so all my fruit is in containers but i am growing annuals in ground, i have uploaded some videos of my new garden here in Australia if anyone is interested. Still just learning and waiting for my first real piece of fruit but i have a single guava thats getting closer to being ripe
No I don't think so. I should have pruned them shorter this spring. I also could have thinned even more. I thought that thinning over half the fruit was excessive, but it was just such a heavy set this year.
I think its an issue with most trees, but peaches tend to grow very quickly which probably doesn't help. A slower growing tree may have more solid branches before it fruits.
How do you keep them from freezing during winter? i live near Montreal and am looking to grow peach trees but I am afraid winter will kill them. Thanks
I think you have black rot on your grapes as well as grapevine moth damage. You may need to spray at the beginning of the season to control the damage.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Black rot on the grapes is more of a problem in wet years--like this year. I don't see it in dry years. Can definitely minimize by keeping the bottom 3-4' of grapevine clear of leaves and picking up mummified fruit. I don't spray.
Thanks for the tips! Do you continually prune all season? I had these pruned very heavily, especially down low, and its still a jungle down there a few months later.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Obviously there's the extensive dormant season prune plus stripping off any new, low sprouts come spring. During active growth I prune as little as possible, just taking off the ends of canes that escape the arbor and hang in the "low zone" where they might pick up fungal spores. While I appreciate the need to maximize photosynthesis, I also keep the groundcover short beneath the grapevines to maximize airflow and keep the whole area drier. I assume there is variation in susceptibility among grape varieties. I've transplanted and trained a wild grape up my driveway lightpole--those seem to be indestructible (yet still delicious), vs. a variety such as 'Pink Reliance.'
I've heard that Contender, Intrepid & Veteran are all much better tasting than Reliance....any truth to that? I've only tried Contender, how do they compare to Reliance in flavor? Contender peaches are the best tasting peaches I've ever eaten😋
Do you have deer pressure? Do you grow dwarf or standard size trees? I’d like dwarf size, but I have lots of deer and trying to figure how to work it out
We do have a lot of deer. We grow both sizes of trees. Usually wildlife trees like serviceberry and cherries will be on full size root stock, and fruit trees will be on semi dwarf. For deer, we have a wilder area that I have left trees up to form 2 natural chokepoints of deer entry. At those entrances I have planted wide alleys of thorny bushes. On the deer side of those walls we have Jerusalem Artichokes and wild apples for them to eat. They have food they love there, and then a deep wide wall of thorns, ajd often don't push further. Then we also have 3 dogs who are outside almost all day (they love it out there) and they probably do the most amount of work.
I will have to do that next time, I forgot. It's doing well. The raspberries are dying back as part of their natural cycle (these were the 2nd year for those canes), but everything else is doing well.
A fun tangent to your video is: The Presidents of the United States: Peaches (search the song/video): ua-cam.com/video/wvAnQqVJ3XQ/v-deo.html can't get that song out of my head while I look at your peach trees, and your "future problem"! (Moving to the country...gonna eat a lot of peaches....millions of peaches, peaches for me! BTW, my apple trees have the same problem here.
I use absolutely nothing. Just really good soil building techniques so the plants have everything they need. Plants in nature don't need humans to keep them healthy, they just need good soil, and for the humans to stop interrupting the nutrient cycle by doing stupid things like cleaning up leaves and plants just to make things look pretty in the fall.
Wow, that’s really amazing!!! I have seen other channels where people have to use all sorts of organic sprays, kaolin clay, etc. to get semi-decent fruit and it honestly seems like alot to keep up with in addition to getting pretty expensive! I am in process of sheet mulching and putting in guilds around my young fruit trees and hoping that will help and eliminate the need for sprays altogether-then I don’t need to worry about harming beneficial insects or making my soil toxic. Thanks for all your helpful videos-your food forest is amazing!!!!
The real key here is to focus focus focus on insect attracting plants in the herbaceous layer. You want to bring in as many predators as possible and have them hanging out every day right next to your fruit. That means messy looking wild systems where plants climb right into tree canopies, but it works.
I'm curious to know if you know the name of your peach trees. I'm surprised you can even grow peaches in your zone never mind the amount that you are getting.
oh good I have figs growing and was worried because they are so small. they look the same as yours. I put a reliance peach in this year as well, how many years before yours fruited? :)
I think these are in their 4th year. We got them as 2 year old baby whips. I let that whip grow the first year and that February after I cut it belt height to shape it.
@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Do you have a video on how you care for your peach trees - do you run into trouble with peach tree survival rate over winters? Special fertilizer? Wind block? Some people I have seen in zone 4 say their cold-hardy peach trees always die after year 3. Thanks!
@CS-kd3zt No I don't. Mine have done very well. It could just be all about proper hardiness and variety selection. For me, my best are Reliance, contender and frost. Veteran is struggling a bit.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy hum. research and experimentation are called for. after all, many fruit trees originated as understory forest trees. Heavy shade would definitely be bad, but something gentler?
Yeah, that's why I'm trying to get an overstory of nitrogen fixers going. Right now I have planted some black locust around in various spots as a trial, because they will still keep dappled sun to the trees beneath.
Man, we used to have such bad coddling moth. About 4 years ago we didn't get a single apple or pear without them in it. Then I started planting more and more herbs and flowers to attract green lacewings and ladybugs. I added water features to attract dragonflies. If you look at my wildflower hill episodes and pond herbaceous layer episodes you can see some of the stuff I planted (50-100 different plants). Since then, we haven't had any problems with them. We get the odd one in a fruit (if you want predators you have to have pests), but it's never too bad. We don't spray anything, organic or otherwise, because even organic sprays will upset the balance. You actually want some pests, you just don't want too many pests. You can look at my video called "how I solved my pest problems" for more detail on that philosophy. As I say in a few videos... we have no pest problems. That doesn't mean we have no pests. It means we have no pest problems.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Thank you for your quick response. I look forward to watching your suggested video. I am also in Ontario, gardening zone 4. What zone is your beautiful garden in?
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I’ve also seen in your other videos you grow fig and redstar peach which all seem to be zone 5+, how to you keep them alive? I would especially love to try figs but we can get down to -30 F some winters Btw thank you for these videos, I feel like I’ve learned a lot
Yeah we hit -40C last year, which is -40F. They survived. I don't do anything special for them. My opinion is that if my cold weather kills a plant, then it doesn't get to live here. I just don't have time to baby stuff.
I honestly couldn't even tell you. I painted them when I first started this food forest and I threw away the boxes. The tags faded after 1 season. I have no idea what these are!
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I thought that they could be wild so either Fox or Riverbank. No, if they are small and not great invest in another vine. We are having a great season with Riverbank wild grapes here in Ottawa so will try to make some wine this year. You are an inspiration. Keep posting!!!
Lol, and to think I have at least that many more coming in a week. And that's off 3 trees, and in a few years I should have about 15 in production age. I may have gone overboard.
It might be an interesting idea to do harvest weigh ins next year. It would make for a great data point.
The hard part is how to handle 3 boys who rip 10 peaches of the tree each day. William was pulling in bowls of raspberries earlier this season and just demolishing them in 1 sitting. 3 boys, 11,13,15 years old eat like crazy.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Well at least it's something you can make them do when they're older and the forest will be more mature.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I like you, we all like you, but this is the problem with permaculture in general. Too idealistic with no raw data points (not saying that you personally should have the data, I know that's not what this channel is about, but in an overall sense).
There is a reason professional market gardeners don't use a permaculture model. It is great for homesteading and not much else. It's never going to feed the world.
I agree with the few data points to compare to. The issues with a permaculture farm is high labour inputs. The world today is set up where this is a large drawback. However with automation coming, a lot of economists are worried about job loss. Stuff like universal basic income are thought to be a solution to that incoming problem. However maybe more labour intensive but regenerative farming methods can help there as well.
Another major thing is that we compare permaculture models to extractive non sustainable industrial farming. It's like comparing 2 houses ability to heat themselves. One house has designed a passive geothermal system that just barely gets the job done, but it does work. The other house is burning the furniture and the flooring and is now burning the roof trusses to stay warm. And then we come and say, "see look, the geothermal method doesn't put out as much heat as that guy over there setting his dining room table on fire. The geothermal method is inferior."
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I should of been more clear when making the connection. I am not comparing permaculture with industrial ag but rather small market gardeners/whole system farmers who try to be regenerative. They have to be profitable and able to pump out food to meet demand. These are the true food pioneers who we should get behind. People like Richard Perkins. They can be the vessels we need to fix the broken food system.
Permaculture, if to be taken seriously as a solution to the food crisis we face ( let's be real here and say that this is exactly what permaculture claims to be), must be measured accurately and honestly with raw data. Anything else is hot air.
The current big ag food system is a ticking time bomb. We have less than 60 years of topsoil left if the latest UN reports are to be believed. We are literally turning the world into a desert.
The solution is whole system farms that don't import materials. We need to start closing fertility loops if we are to seriously talk about regenerative agriculture.
Ah, peaches, "how do I love thee. Let me count the ways" . . . peach pie, peach cobbler, peaches and ice cream, upside down peach cake, peach jam, canned peaches, frozen peaches, peach ice cream peach yogurt, peach preserves, sliced peaches. Hmm, maybe it's time for you to open a roadside fruit stand. 🍑 🤗
Peach kebobs, peach fricassee, peach flambe, I sho do love peach
Peach Brandywine
🤣Nice hockey net trellis. Everything is beautiful! Loved the close-up of the dogs.
My dog is very keen on raspberries too. Used to hide in the raspberry patch and you could see the canes move as he carefully picked them off himself. Nowadays, he's got us fully trained and we pick them for him.
Just love the peach harvest there. Now that would not be considered a glut at all in my household, seeing as my husband eats tinned peaches every day.
I can't get hold of 'Reliance' over here in Scotland, but there seems to be a couple of other varieties that may do just as well from Chris Bowers and Blackmoor nurseries here in the UK.
Thanks for the comment. Hopefully other people near you can benefit from those nurseries.
The purple tall plant around the pond is incredible!
The butterflies love it
It's amazing how much has grown by the pond in just one year.
It’s interesting how the perennials are doing so well in a summer the annuals are struggling. It’s like they know. Maybe they do. 💚
The same thing happened to my peach tree. It’s been so weighed down with peaches that I lost a large limb. My apple trees are loaded with fruit too. Everything is growing well. I have learned a lot from you. Today I made a fresh batch of biochar. Thank you for your videos.
Awesome! Good luck 👍
I'm sure you probably already know this but just in case you don't you should thin your fruit on your fruiting trees. You may need to do it more than once. This helps prevent limbs from breaking but you also get bigger fruit.
Congrats on the abundance!! Looks like peach cobbler this winter. Hope you have a large freezer! Too much food said no one ever! 💙🌎✌
Love the abundance of peaches 🍑 It’s kinda hilarious how many more peach trees are going to grow up to produce even more peaches 😳 🤣
You must love peaches and didn’t realize how much each tree would produce 😊
Yes, peaches are all my families favorite fruit. These don't go to waste! Many people also don't realize they can be grown this far north, so they also have a nice niche to supply if we ever wanted to sell these at the farmers market. You can only get about 20 cents per apple up here, but you can get over a dollar per peach.
Also, because everywhere around here are monoculture apple orchards, th apple pests and diseases are through the roof. However for peaches there is really only peach leaf curl to deal with, and we are managing okay with that, ajd that disease doesn't kill the peach fruit, just some leaves. However there are really no peach pests up here, at least I have none with our native predator population we are establishing. Knock on wood!
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy
Our monoculture here is pears. Have you heard of the company Harry & David? They ship gourmet pears all around the world (lots of other gourmet foods too but they’re famous for pears). They sell 9 pears for 29.95 plus shipping (with some 1lb extra special pears selling for 5 for $29.95 😳 They are sold out early each year! I guess it’s the whole gourmet and status thing of sending family gourmet pears. The company has been around since the great depression but unfortunately 1-800flowers bought them a couple of years ago and the integrity of the company has gone way down hill.
Peaches sell for quite a bit here too but I don’t think as much as your area. Your peaches and berries will make for healthy boys 😊
I've never heard of them. My dad used to buy a small box of pears from China when we were kids. So I know the idea. Crazy stuff. Slap the word gourmet on them and sell it for 5x.
Reliance! Out of UNH.!!! :D My neighbor...a UNH arborist professor!!...I'm in NH...on a family farm (grew up milking and farming) But, left the farm to be an accountant/economist. Returned decades later...to the sanity of the farm! Sorry...just a bit of northern NH pride here. :D And now following you (and others) to turn this land into food for as many as possible. Let the birds spread the wealth.
Have to try to share a video of my Basset Hound...berry picking. He's got a good nose! Found some wild grapes I wasn't aware of!!
Dr. Meader! Responsible for the Meader Persimmon as well as Reliance peach. I grew up in Durham, did undergrad at UNH. Proudly growing both of these trees here in NH! :)
we actually had the same weather pattern in Finland, the early summer was terribly hot and dry, and now we have had constant rain... I'm sort of happy to get an extreme example right away so I know my well won't dry and that apple seedlings can survive the hardship with close to no watering.
Yeah, testing limits is going to actually be good considering it's likely only going to be even more extreme weather in the future.
I love your grape trellis set up how it has all of the grapes hanging down, and creates such a beautiful canopy! If you ever feel in the mood to do a video on how you setup and made that trellis, that would be incredible! Thanks again, I love your content!
Haha, I threw this up haphazardly. If I were to do it properly it would be sunken cement posts. But I wanted this one to be more temporary, and then planting trees on the backside, and hopefully transition to where the trees are the trellis in the future, and take down the wood one.
If you want big grapes you have to thin them I believe (about 1/3-1/2 of them), but it's a lot of work, so you have to decide if its worth it :-)
Sweet pups! Wow, nice peach harvest. Sure hope you have enough jars and lids if you preserve by canning. They seem to be a hot commodity. Your food forests are doing fantastic. Blessings🌿
Indeed! We saw some in the stores the other day and bought another vew cases of jars and lids
I took a big bag of peaches home the other day, thanks!! The grapes look amazing, I can’t believe how many you have. We need to start grapes. Thanks Keith.
I hope you ate them because you have more coming if yoy want them!
I'm also in Ontario, in the Ottawa Valley and we've had so much rain here that it's taken a tole on some of my plants. Out of 7 zucchini plants only two have actually produced and they're a third of the usual size, my tomatoes are behind too. But peppers and cucumbers are going wild. It's been a weird year for the garden here.
What a cute dog. Love it.
Lol....hockey net trellis🤣 the puppy is huge now!
She grew so fast!
Thank you for the wonderful tour! I finally started my food forest this year. I am so excited to see it grow as yours has! Keep up the great work! I absolutely love your pond too! 😁
Cheers 🍻
I feel ya. My nectarine tree had folded over onto my bedroom window... and pear tree just crazy ! Love it ! Though I don't want branches to rake if it can be avoided. Next year I'll thin the fruits more !
Yeah lol. Love the username BTW.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy thanks !
Hi, thanks for your vidéos. You inspire me to grow, and use the maximum of Space to produce in my small backyard of bungalow. Its my Year #1 and its bringing me lots of joy and feeling part of thé mouvement of protecting and restauring our land . For your amazing peaches… in which zone are you? I’m in zone 6a (Laval, near Montreal, Québec). Thanks again to give us so much good informations on fondamental things. I hope lots of people will join the mouvement and that our suburbains spaces will be transform and become source of food, sécurité, and opportunités to building relations on common goals. Common goals are powerfull to build relationships and strong communities. Sécurité, paix et amour, c’est ce que je souhaite pour tous, et la planète inclue! :)
Merci Beaucoup, je suis en zone 5b Canadiene, c'est equivalent a zone 4b American.
AMAZING! AMAZING! AMAZING!
Wow guys, awesome! So many peaches I can’t believe my eyes. And still much more to come.
You’ll have to put up a stand at the road and let the kids make themselves some $$$.
Happy to see everything coming together for you 5 years into this journey.
I see your peach trees and where they broke and I feel for you man.
Will you prune them down quite a bit this winter so they are more manageable? Maybe even reachable without a ladder. Would you ever do something like that. Maybe worth doing to one of your plenty lol.
Omg Keith I love your gardens man. Everything looks beautiful.
I wish I had the space like you. I’m not complaining because I have a great backyard but damn. Even just your giant compost pile with veg growing all around it, I just love it, food everywhere.
So much fun. So much food.
I love my little food forest more and more everyday I walk through it and do my chop and drop, and see my plants and trees exploding with growth this year, so much food to eat. It’s just such a great feeling to watch something you’ve created turn into something so beautiful.
Amazing job guys. Keep up the good (hard) work. It’s the hard work that makes us feel good inside right. So rewarding.
Happy gardening guys!
Cheers
Oh btw I planted the Reliance peach in my forest garden this year. It’s doing very well. It’s nice to know they’re doing so well in our province / growing zone. I can’t wait until mine starts producing anything close to as much as yours lol.
Thanks so much! Yeah this season is the first one where the food harvest has been so abundant I can't keep up. As soon as I'm done peach season we are going to head straight into apples and pears.
I designed this thing with diversity to spread the harvest season out, and its so nice to see it working so well in that way.
Enjoy your Reliance peach! It's my favorite.
The perennial food forests are showing their benefit this year. My perennial of producing age are producing like yours.
That's the nice thing about too many berries. If there's more than you need, they become a bird attractant. Said birds, in my area anyway, also eat a lot of bugs!
Exactly right!
Great tour, thanks. Very interesting 👍
Huge peach envy from east coast NS!
i love the short vids that show the progress im an avid watcher keith. im so glad to see your figs produce fruit i wasnt sure they would if they die back every year just awesome
Cheers 🍻
This is great to see - thank you so much for sharing!
The peaches look great!!!
I planted a Reliance peach last year. Looking forward to even a fraction someday!
I am also worried about food scarcity. All of the farmers here in California have had their water cut off and that’s after so many of them have already stopped growing. We had an orchard but pulled out all of the trees several years ago because it was getting bad back then. I’m getting out of here and moving back to the middle and starting a food forest there first thing. Everyone should have a year’s worth of food put back. I’m worried about a famine.
I know at least 3 ways to produce water on your own with very small investments. Look up for off grid ways.
Get a dew net. Very fine mesh you hang up, gathers moisture from the air and drips down into buckets. They use it in the Andes where it rains scarcely and it keeps people and plants hydrated enough to thrive.
I think there's a few strong individual food producers in southern California who probably have all sorts of wisdom about how to deal with the intense heat and lack of water.
We have the water scarcity problem in Chihuahua, Mexico. The above the law guys just pump with out caring. I've changed my expectations. I grow prickly pear, wild broccoli, parsley, pumpkins (we eat the whole plant except the root), grapes (mainly eating the leaves), rocket, purslane, malva, pomegranates, peaches, jujubes, figs, mulberries... all these plants are heat and cold tolerant and they all tolerate dry periods, and insect pressure. Compost what you can... tumble weed is usually available.
I hope you can make your food forest a reality! Thankfully, there’s plenty of desert-adapted fruits and vegetables.
Awesome harvest!!
Keith, Quite the load of peaches. You'll be eating the preserved ones every day. Tell the missus that now she'll have a peaches and cream complexion....
you could air layer that peach, did it with a huge plum, almost identical branch break. Good stuff man
Air layer on the break and the cut below it next year?
How did you do it? I am air layering my peach on 2 branches, but can it be done on a broken limb?
Very cool! Also zone 4 in Minnesota US and just starting to put some fruit trees in the ground. I didn’t think I’d be able to plant a fig in the ground and have it survive. Do you know which variety the fig tree is? I’m guessing Chicago Hardy
I think I was told that thinning a third of the grapes would help those left to size up. But I'll have to wait till my grape vine is more mature to test this out so it's just food for thought 😉.
Thanks 😊
my father repeatedly sticks branches back on with some product, i think for grafts, and ties a string around it and generally leaves it there, so there are a few traces on the bark from when the string didn't decompose as quickly. he uses flat ropes with metal tighteners (like on plane seatbelts) to support it.
i don't think i've seen his methods fail, so that could be an option to save the fallen branches
I've read a few different opinions on that. Some say it works and some say it introduces future weakness and disease spots in the tree, and that it's often better to just cut below the damage and have a fresh slate.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy i must say, we live in a dry-ish area (often warm+dry) so it's not humid, but near a swamp(?) so the water table is about 2 to 3m under ground, that may be why it has never failed. the trees are strong and grow well but they can't always resist the storms with high winds
edit: the literal translation is "pond" but it's bigger and swampy on the edges, more like a lake but not quite
Best "problem" to have: Food forest pruduces too much. :D I'm "jealously" waiting for mine to get there :D
You food forest never fails to impress and inspire me. And that fig plant! I didn’t even know we could grow figs in Ontario. I have to source one out. Would it grow in zone 5b?
Yes definitely, but it may be like mine where it dies to the ground each year. The variety you want is Chicago Hardy, because it can fruit on 1 year old wood. This is important when the tree dies each year but the roots survive.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy oh perfect! Thanks so much! 💚
I bet those grapes would make some great compost. I think the birds could share a few with you
I've heard that you should thin your fruit trees extremely early so that it gives you a nice yield every year, and if you don't you'll only get a nice yield every other year. Have you ever noticed that to be the case?
It's hard to say because this is the first year I have ever had to thin. I hope I did enough. I thought thinning more than half the fruit was a lot. In hindsight I should have thinned like 80% of it off. Crazy fruit set this year.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy well if next year you get next to nothing, then you'll know from then on you might want to strip off a lot more of the fruit very early in the season from them on. Good luck. I've been buying so much stone fruit lately, I'm going to end up broke. I finally bought a peach and a plum. I striped most all of the fruit from one tree and I don't think the other has any. I know I want roots not fruits the first year.
Do you have any experience with balancing out your grass sections and wood chipped areas so the grass doesn’t invade your food forest on the boundaries? I see you have comfrey around the edge, is that effective for you? I have Bermuda grass…lol. Thanks in advance, I am binge watching your videos so sorry if I missed it somewhere!
Hey Kristina nice to see you again here. I still have to watch your latest garden video... been so busy! Indeed, the comfrey wall was a trial this season and was a tremendous success. Our concern here is also Bermuda grass... it creeps right under almost anything then pops back up. The idea with the comfrey wall is that is shades from above, but also below the soil comfrey roots are INSANE, and block it there also.
So nice looking at the pond :) any frogs?
So many, hundreds!
Hi Keith...im interested to know the ways you preserved that lovely harvest!!
We've been eating about 40 per day. I actually need to tell the kids to cool it because too much sugar can actually cause issues, even if it's sugar with fiber.
My mother has made a bunch of peach cobblers and peach crumble.
We have about 200 peaches cut and frozen. I'm going to probably pull another couple hundred tomorrow and I will can those ones. My wife also wants to make peach pie and jam, so we will try that also.
The grapes are also going to be picked this weekend, and we are coming into tomato season. We have beans coming out of our ears. Send help!
Just had a friend bring me a bag of fresh peaches. I might put in a tree one of these years. Probably yellow flesh, freestone and hopefully, disease resistant and... cold hardy (Is that too much to ask?). I might go with a smaller rootstock, to ensure the trees don't get that big... I can't eat that many peaches haha. :)
I think 6-8' tall and wide is the perfect fruit tree size for me. If I have a little more space I might let the trees get 10' tall.
Wow, your liatris @ 5:16 looks fantastic! Our is just barely starting to bloom. I'm super impressed by the plants - I think I'm gonna buy a bunch of corms or starts next year and put them everywhere.
Plant the peach pits after you're done eating them. From what I understand peaches grow very similar to the parent since they are self-pollinating. :P
Definitely do this, even if not on your land. I planted a few hundred peach pits this week.
You can keep them small with pruning. They aren't a huge tree to begin with.
You can't rely on rootstock to keep your tree small, because "small" for a tree can still be 15' tall easily. The best way to keep a tree small is to prune it starting when it is young. I reccomend the book "Grow a Little Fruit Tree" if you want a really in-depth but easy to read book on keeping fruit trees small.
@@LemurBee I agree 100% on pruning to control tree size, but I think there is quite a bit of difference in terms of vigor to deal with between rootstocks. Luckily summer pruning can help a bit. Probably 1/2 of my trees are on full size or seedling rootstocks. Anecdotally, they seem to want to grow a bit more upright than my semi-dwarf trees. I'm just advocating to save yourself a little bit of headache (water sprouts / suckers / tying branches to better angles), even if it's fairly minor :)
I've had full size fruit trees in my back yard before (numerous 30' cherries and 25' apples / pears), it's just not for me. 6-10' seems to be just about perfect. Way easier to keep a small tree small as you mentioned.
If you cut your grape clusters in half when they first appear, you will get bigger grapes.
Hi! Thees peaches are great. I would never have dared to think of peaches in our climate, but after watching your videos I have now planned a peach tree. We are in zone 6b, so it doesn't actually get as cold in winter as it does where you live, but we are at 720m and there can always be a short frosts in April in some years. That is, when the peaches are in blossom. I wonder how that works for you. In your climate, there must still be frost in April, right? Do you have special varieties whose blossoms are particularly frost-resistant? Can you say something about that? And are your trees bushes or half-trunks? They look quite low.
I'm a bit under pressure now because I have to buy now and decide on a variety. Unfortunately I don't have as much space as you and I have to choose well, otherwise I'll lose years....
Thanks and many greetings from the Black Forest.
Yes, what variety did you plant? We have reliance, contender, frost, redstar, and a few others, and they all tolerate late frosts and cold winter nights. We've had snow as late as mid May last year. We still got peaches, but it's hard to say if we got less because we had a CRAZY year the previous year, and the trees were just taking a season off (had hundreds vs thousands of peaches), or if the late snow and frost did them in. But overall, these varieties all work well.
Most of my trees are pruned open-vase at waist height.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Thanks for the info. Not planted yet. I just decided this winter to try a peach after I watched your videos :-). I love them and my father had one (not here on the mountains but in the lowlands). Unfortunately I don't get Reliance in Germany and Frost is only available in Denmark, too. So I did a lot of research and probably will try Revita. This variety seems to be very frost tolerant and robust and is very much resistant against Taphrina deformans which is a widespread problem here.
Awesome, this is exactly the right approach. Your issues won't be the same as mine, and vice versa. Your ideal variety will then be different to mine. Great stuff!
Which province do you live in? I live in Manitoba where it can get very cold, and was wondering if it’s possible to grow peaches in this harsh climate?
Some super cold hardy varieties could work. I can't speak for sure though, I think it really depends on if you are zone 3 or 4. Zone 3 I would say probably not, but zone 4 could be okay. Try it and see.
Can you make a video on how you address black cluster fungus on the grapes? Do you bag all the clusters? Do you just not get it there in Ontario? Even the wild grapes here get it badly.
I prune my grapes in the spring and thats all the work I do on them. It wouldn't be much of a video.
💜
I have never lost a branch on my peaches, maybe prune more aggresive, those branches are long and thin for fruit production
Indeed, I usually cut about 3 feet off the top of the tree to keep it back, in addition to shaping cuts.
It'd be awesome to see how you know when to pick your hazelnuts and how you know when to pick them
I'm still figuring that one out
Fantastic harvest, is there a way of pruning peach trees so to avoid branches to break when loaded with fruits?
Yeah basically my peach pruning videos. I mention in them to cut back a few feet off the top each year, but then I didn't do enough this year because I wanted a large epic look. It's a pain to have the fruit up high, but I am going more for looks here, so I left them super tall. I should have cut them back more.
That being said, last year these peaches gave me about 10 peaches each, so I had no idea what the bumper crop year would look like. These trees all tried to set thousands of fruit each (literally thousands). I pulled off between 50%-80% of the fruit in the spring, and thought that was enough. Apparently even that wasn't enough. Crazy.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy thank you very much for your reply, I will watch your peach pruning videos then, this year I did not get any peaches or apricots due to a late frost,; there is always fear involved in pruning as that sometimes seems to compromise a future harvest but as you shows that is not the case, I thank you again for showing your wonderful harvest, Best, dami.
So, I'm trying to figure out something. I'm in Kentucky now after moving from Tennessee. In Tennessee I lost lots of peaches from late frosts. So I was thinking that if I had varities with large amount of chill hours they would wake up later. Do you think that would be the case? It looks like the ones you have are high chill hours (I don't know on frost but it looks like it would be). I'd like to do something similar with plums as well.
What’s a good white peach to plant in zone 5A? Love the video
Most of mine aren't white, so I'm not sure to be honest.
Thats an amazing place you've created. I am renting so all my fruit is in containers but i am growing annuals in ground, i have uploaded some videos of my new garden here in Australia if anyone is interested. Still just learning and waiting for my first real piece of fruit but i have a single guava thats getting closer to being ripe
What a great problem to have!
We should all be so fortunate to have too much food. Would espaliering your peaches prevent breakage?
No I don't think so. I should have pruned them shorter this spring. I also could have thinned even more. I thought that thinning over half the fruit was excessive, but it was just such a heavy set this year.
I was going to ask how to prevent this. Is this always an issue with peach trees? Or any fruit tree?
I think its an issue with most trees, but peaches tend to grow very quickly which probably doesn't help. A slower growing tree may have more solid branches before it fruits.
How do you keep them from freezing during winter? i live near Montreal and am looking to grow peach trees but I am afraid winter will kill them. Thanks
They can take a freeze.
I think you have black rot on your grapes as well as grapevine moth damage. You may need to spray at the beginning of the season to control the damage.
Thanks for the info. I don't spray anything, so we will just have to see how it plays out. It should be an interesting experiment.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Black rot on the grapes is more of a problem in wet years--like this year. I don't see it in dry years. Can definitely minimize by keeping the bottom 3-4' of grapevine clear of leaves and picking up mummified fruit. I don't spray.
Thanks for the tips! Do you continually prune all season? I had these pruned very heavily, especially down low, and its still a jungle down there a few months later.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Obviously there's the extensive dormant season prune plus stripping off any new, low sprouts come spring. During active growth I prune as little as possible, just taking off the ends of canes that escape the arbor and hang in the "low zone" where they might pick up fungal spores. While I appreciate the need to maximize photosynthesis, I also keep the groundcover short beneath the grapevines to maximize airflow and keep the whole area drier. I assume there is variation in susceptibility among grape varieties. I've transplanted and trained a wild grape up my driveway lightpole--those seem to be indestructible (yet still delicious), vs. a variety such as 'Pink Reliance.'
GOOD VIDEO, MY RULE OF THUMB FROM MANY YEARS OF THINNING PEACHES, THIN WHAT YOU THINK IS THINNED THEN DOUBLE THAT AMOUNT.
can you please tell me what the cold hardy peachs could?
I've heard that Contender, Intrepid & Veteran are all much better tasting than Reliance....any truth to that? I've only tried Contender, how do they compare to Reliance in flavor? Contender peaches are the best tasting peaches I've ever eaten😋
I would say contender are better yes, but Reliance are VERY good also. More like a 10/10 vs a 9.8/10.
Do you have deer pressure? Do you grow dwarf or standard size trees?
I’d like dwarf size, but I have lots of deer and trying to figure how to work it out
We do have a lot of deer. We grow both sizes of trees. Usually wildlife trees like serviceberry and cherries will be on full size root stock, and fruit trees will be on semi dwarf.
For deer, we have a wilder area that I have left trees up to form 2 natural chokepoints of deer entry. At those entrances I have planted wide alleys of thorny bushes. On the deer side of those walls we have Jerusalem Artichokes and wild apples for them to eat. They have food they love there, and then a deep wide wall of thorns, ajd often don't push further.
Then we also have 3 dogs who are outside almost all day (they love it out there) and they probably do the most amount of work.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy thanks for the detailed response!
No updates on the royal rumble pot?
I will have to do that next time, I forgot. It's doing well. The raspberries are dying back as part of their natural cycle (these were the 2nd year for those canes), but everything else is doing well.
A fun tangent to your video is: The Presidents of the United States: Peaches (search the song/video):
ua-cam.com/video/wvAnQqVJ3XQ/v-deo.html
can't get that song out of my head while I look at your peach trees, and your "future problem"! (Moving to the country...gonna eat a lot of peaches....millions of peaches, peaches for me! BTW, my apple trees have the same problem here.
Do you use any sprays (such as horticultural oil, etc.) on your trees to keep your fruit looking so nice? Or what is your technique?
I use absolutely nothing. Just really good soil building techniques so the plants have everything they need. Plants in nature don't need humans to keep them healthy, they just need good soil, and for the humans to stop interrupting the nutrient cycle by doing stupid things like cleaning up leaves and plants just to make things look pretty in the fall.
Wow, that’s really amazing!!! I have seen other channels where people have to use all sorts of organic sprays, kaolin clay, etc. to get semi-decent fruit and it honestly seems like alot to keep up with in addition to getting pretty expensive! I am in process of sheet mulching and putting in guilds around my young fruit trees and hoping that will help and eliminate the need for sprays altogether-then I don’t need to worry about harming beneficial insects or making my soil toxic. Thanks for all your helpful videos-your food forest is amazing!!!!
The real key here is to focus focus focus on insect attracting plants in the herbaceous layer. You want to bring in as many predators as possible and have them hanging out every day right next to your fruit. That means messy looking wild systems where plants climb right into tree canopies, but it works.
I'm curious to know if you know the name of your peach trees. I'm surprised you can even grow peaches in your zone never mind the amount that you are getting.
Yes those look delicious don't they.
These are soooooo delicious. Reliance, contender and Frost are the varieties.
invite friends over and they can bring buckets and grab some
Indeed!
After you have canned,pickled and dried all you can, it'll be time to make booze!
oh good I have figs growing and was worried because they are so small. they look the same as yours. I put a reliance peach in this year as well, how many years before yours fruited? :)
I think these are in their 4th year. We got them as 2 year old baby whips. I let that whip grow the first year and that February after I cut it belt height to shape it.
LOL good luck with all that! I watched the guy in Nebraska growing Oranges and wanted to do that also. Then I priced it out! LOL
Will these peaches grow in calgary?
Why would the trees produce until they break? What's that about?
I know, you'd think they would have figured this out better by now LOL
I'm up in Maine Zone 4. Just wondering what kind of Peaches you are growing here in Zone 4? Thanks!
Reliance, contender and frost are the ones who have set fruit. I have a few others that haven't set fruit yet because they are only about 2 years old.
@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Do you have a video on how you care for your peach trees - do you run into trouble with peach tree survival rate over winters? Special fertilizer? Wind block? Some people I have seen in zone 4 say their cold-hardy peach trees always die after year 3. Thanks!
@CS-kd3zt No I don't. Mine have done very well. It could just be all about proper hardiness and variety selection. For me, my best are Reliance, contender and frost. Veteran is struggling a bit.
If the peaches had more shade from overstory nut trees, might they set less fruit and keep their branches?
Very likely yes. They may not even fruit at all though. And/or any fruit would likely not ripen well if at all.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy hum. research and experimentation are called for. after all, many fruit trees originated as understory forest trees. Heavy shade would definitely be bad, but something gentler?
Yeah, that's why I'm trying to get an overstory of nitrogen fixers going. Right now I have planted some black locust around in various spots as a trial, because they will still keep dappled sun to the trees beneath.
How do you controll codling moths organicly on fruit trees?
Man, we used to have such bad coddling moth. About 4 years ago we didn't get a single apple or pear without them in it. Then I started planting more and more herbs and flowers to attract green lacewings and ladybugs. I added water features to attract dragonflies. If you look at my wildflower hill episodes and pond herbaceous layer episodes you can see some of the stuff I planted (50-100 different plants). Since then, we haven't had any problems with them. We get the odd one in a fruit (if you want predators you have to have pests), but it's never too bad. We don't spray anything, organic or otherwise, because even organic sprays will upset the balance. You actually want some pests, you just don't want too many pests. You can look at my video called "how I solved my pest problems" for more detail on that philosophy.
As I say in a few videos... we have no pest problems. That doesn't mean we have no pests. It means we have no pest problems.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Thank you for your quick response. I look forward to watching your suggested video. I am also in Ontario, gardening zone 4. What zone is your beautiful garden in?
@@organicnorth5492 We are in Canadian zone 5 (for other people reading this, that is similar to USDA zone 4).
What hardiness zone are you? I didn’t think peaches could be grown in Canada
Zone 4. There are some cold hardy peaches such as Reliance, contender, frost, etc.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I’ve also seen in your other videos you grow fig and redstar peach which all seem to be zone 5+, how to you keep them alive? I would especially love to try figs but we can get down to -30 F some winters
Btw thank you for these videos, I feel like I’ve learned a lot
Yeah we hit -40C last year, which is -40F. They survived. I don't do anything special for them. My opinion is that if my cold weather kills a plant, then it doesn't get to live here. I just don't have time to baby stuff.
Where can I get this reliance peach?
Fox or Riverbank grapes?
I honestly couldn't even tell you. I painted them when I first started this food forest and I threw away the boxes. The tags faded after 1 season. I have no idea what these are!
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I thought that they could be wild so either Fox or Riverbank. No, if they are small and not great invest in another vine. We are having a great season with Riverbank wild grapes here in Ottawa so will try to make some wine this year. You are an inspiration. Keep posting!!!
Thanks for the suggestions and comments!
What variety peach does the best in your zone?
Reliance, contender and frost and my favorites.
Where about do you live?
Southern Ontario Canada.
Cold Hardy Peach varieties ?????
Dude, that's a metric assload of peaches.
Lol, and to think I have at least that many more coming in a week. And that's off 3 trees, and in a few years I should have about 15 in production age. I may have gone overboard.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy yeah I had a similar problem and switched to asian pears for the new trees.
You're being cruel to your peach trees