Apples and Peaches

In the last week, I have been checking on my peaches.  I had made up a little 'cage' for them, to keep anything off them that might eat them or damage them.  We had just one peach last year and this year the wind blew all the tiny peaches off on the west side.  So with just two peaches remaining, two tiny little furry-bum peaches, I was aiming to get them to picking size!

I took the little cage off today and this is the beautiful sight that greeted me.

They are still a little too firm and green tinged on one side, so back on for the cage and a little more patience and see what happens.  I can almost taste their deliciousness.  At least this year we will hopefully not be cutting just one peach into 6 pieces!

So I put the little 'cage' back on the peaches, since they have come this far.  And then checked out the Granny Smith apples to see how they fared after the weather we've had...

and the Pinkerbelles.  It's really great that the plants are doing well and producing (so far so good touch wood!) even with me as a novice - so many people said 'oh you'll never be able to grow apples over here'... but Niki gave me hope as her place isn't far from ours and they manage a nice apple harvest each year :)

Now I just have to figure out how to know when the Granny Smiths are ready to pick... afterall, they're green when they're ready and being apples rather than plums or other soft fruit, they're firm...

Also, after expressing my grr that I couldn't seem to get a continuous overlap in our citrus in terms of not having all the fruit ripen at once, it seems maybe things are changing in that regard.  Out the back, one of the oranges is just flowering, while it's companions elsewhere have a range of different sized fruit on - from pea sized right through to slightly bigger than golf balls.  Also, the lemonade out the front (after it's flowers were blown right off in the winds a month or so ago) has produced more blossoms that are now smaller-than-pea-sized fruit... so there is hope for an overlapping harvest yet!