Peach tree overload!

Peach tree bent in half
Peaches on the ground

I walk out and notice that my poor peach tree was having serious issues with the weight of its fruit. Look at the poor branches. They are bending over and about to touch the ground! So I stop what I am doing and pick all of the peaches off the tree. Any obviously eaten peaches, I throw on the ground next to the tree. Which is already littered with them. Otherwise, I fling the peaches out in the yard to sort later. The tree is actually helping me out by bending its limbs to the ground. I start at the top of a branch and work my way to the base.

And end up with eight grocery bags full of fruit either perfectly fine or with a little bit of insect damage. I definitely do not use pesticides! And I figure that I can use the ones with some tiny damage as cobbler material (cutting out the bad spots). Sadly, I also end up with six garbage bags filled with rotten fruit and insect eaten fruit.

I estimate that there were approximately 300 peaches. Which seems like an awful lot. I mean look at that sad tree. How do they survive on their own in the wild?

Peach bird nest

And there was even a bird’s nest built on some of the peaches. I only noticed the bird as it flew away when it was startled. Which was surprising since I was picking peaches from the tree non-stop for 40 minutes.