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When I first moved to my current residence, on Lake Lakota south of Canton, I continued to bury my kitchen waste in my garden as I had at my previous residence. But after I had lived here a few months, I bought a mulcher, and since then have not done so. So it must have been in the summer of 1992 or early in 1993 that I buried a peach pit, which subsequently germinated and grew.
When it came up, I immediately recognized it as a peach tree, as I had one in my yard when I lived in Millington, TN. I thought that it would winter kill, but it did not. A couple of years later, the rabbits girdled it, but it came back from the root, so I started to protect it in the fall.
This past spring, I was pleasantly surprised when it bloomed, pretty much when the plum trees bloomed. The tree was a lovely bower of pink when an ice storm hit. After the storm, I went out and was sad to see that the blossoms were pathetically stunted and discolored.
A few weeks later, when I was weeding in the garden, I looked up and thought I saw something in the branches. I was astounded that indeed, there were peaches on the tree. I had really never expected to see that. But there they were.
Because I am familiar with the climate in Tennessee, I knew that it would be necessary to keep it well watered in order to assure a crop. I confess that I hardly ever went out to the garden without checking to see if the peaches had fallen off or not. Not one did.
When the crop was finally ready, I picked 93 peaches from a tree around 15' to 20' high. It stands in a very well fertilized plot, just 2' to 3' south of my garden shed. To the west of the garden shed is my greenhouse, so between the two, it is well shielded from winds out of the north and north-west. In addition, to the north of them is my house so it gets very little wind from anything from west-northwest to east-northeast.
In addition, and why it is a well fertilized plot, my asparagus is to the south of the peach tree, and I never clear off my garden trash until the spring, so it has always been partially shielded from the south by the asparagus, which grows up to 8' high. To the east is my garage, and all around the south, east and west are a number of shade and fruit trees.
It would be nice to be able to claim that I did all of this intentionally, but unfortunately, it is really all just dumb luck. If I had planned to protect that particular tree, I could hardly have done it better.
I sprayed all of my fruit trees immediately after the blossoms fell from the plum trees with Malathion, and again a couple of times I sprayed all of the trees, the garden and flower beds with Sevin. There was not a single worm in the plums or the peaches.
And let me tell you, they were delicious. I got three batches of jam, six jars of spiced peaches, a peach pie, two pints of frozen peaches and around ten bowls of peaches with cold and cooked cereal, and just straight peaches. I would have gotten some peach sauce canned but I had to mow my lawn in the meantime, and that slowed me down some. I am really peached out, anyway.
I don't know if this is a fluke or if we always could have grown peaches in South Dakota.
Janet Leih
P. O. Box 164
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