Lessons from a South Island peach grower

My husband Ken and I live in Oxford, north of Christchurch, and we have a cool inland Canterbury garden. Not a good spot for peaches.

However, I insisted on planting a dozen peach and nectarine trees, and we agreed on a paltry half dozen. I chose a range of maturity times, thinking some of them might manage to set fruit between our reliably unpredictable frosts.

They are planted against a high, northfacing wall in raised gardens to help with frost drainage and ripening. I even tried fan training a peach on a fence and post. This requires serious commitment to pruning, summer and winter.

“They will never fruit in Oxford,” said my neighbour disparagingly. For years he was right. We faithfully trained and pruned our young trees. We sighed in delight as the bees pollinated the gorgeous pink flowers, only to have them annihilated by late frosts. If they survived that, then the spring nor’westers smote them, blasting the tiny fruits off the trees in scorching, dragonbreath gusts.

Last spring, after almost nine years of war, I gave up. I dispensed with the hassle of throwing frost cloth over the trees and gave up depressing myself by inspecting damage after every foul wind. I left them to nature’s wrath.

You can imagine my astonishment when I surveyed our trees in November to find every single tree had set with abundant fruit.

Another surprise. When they ripened, these peaches tasted even better than the ones that melted in my mouth 50 years ago.