2025 Peaches - almost 500, so moderate harvest!!!

Our two peach trees have periodic harvests - 2007 was a decent year and 2008 was HUGE as was 2010 (no pics), followed by 2012 which provided a MONSTER crop ... which had over a two thousand peaches, but many broken branches ... so we then called 'em Franken-Tree's! ;-) We got basically zippo the next 3 years ... but 2016 was another big year, and even with fewer branches (and aggressive early season pruning), I'd estimate we got about 1,500 peaches from the two trees! 2018 wasn't as big ... and even though Franken-Tree has lost even more limbs, we still had over a 1,000 peaches. In 2019, we ended up getting about 500 peaches from the two trees despite the Franken-Tree only having a few main branches left. 2020 was a total bust ... just a couple of scrawny peaches. In 2021 was decent with about a 1,000 peaches ... even with the raccoons showing up ... who also came in 2022 darn!

2023 & 2024 were were "hardly any" peaches ... but the peaches were back in 2025 (even on Franken-Tree which has very few branches left) and we ended up with probably close to 500 peaches ... so I'm classifying it as "moderate."

In late July, I started putting wooden beams under the branches to support them until "prime picking" which is near the end of August. BUT ... in early August, I started seeing peaches on the ground that were eaten ... even though they were a couple of weeks away from optimal ripeness. I initially thought this was due to squirrels ... so one morning, Kyle & I trimmed the nearby trees ... and put a metal wrap around the trunk of the tree.

I figured this might at least slow down the squirrels ... but literally that afternoon I looked out and a family of raccoons were climbing up the tree - darn! So those were the late night culprits ... and very unusual to see them during the day. Before I could get my camera to take pictures, Wendy went out there screaming at them - darn again! As I have learned from previous years, nothing will stop them ... although I have not tried an electric fence yet!

It became obvious in the next couple of days that if I didn't start picking the peaches, the trees would be picked clear. So Kyle and I stripped the left tree (which was further along) ... and a week later, Wendy & I picked most of the right tree. I left a few up ... so while the "rate of droppage" went down, the varmints were still coming by. Fortunately, those peaches riped up pretty good in the house and were quite tasty ... although not as awesomely sweet if I had been able to leave 'em on the trees longer.