The first peach blossom of spring winter: TropicSnow, a low chill variety. It has produced Cezanne-worthy fruits from its second year here – but so far I haven’t beaten the critters to them.
This year! This year! Mesh exclusion bags! Fruit fly traps! Pheromones! Chooks given the run of the pepino groundcover – dig, dig my sharp clawed friends! – on the condition that they utterly exterminate all fruit fly larvae. I’m toying with installing a band of slippery plastic (or inedible metal?) around the base of the tree to at least give the possums and the rats a bit of a challenge (or some core body exercise?). Tiger poo?? Whatever it takes!
Peaches apparently only live for a few years, and I simply refuse to have the damn thing die before I wrap my laughing-gear around some luscious sun-warmed home-grown fruit.