Thekla McDaniels wrote:I love peaches. More than peaches, I love apricots, and even more than apricots, I love nectarines.
I love eating them all equally but for preserving, my favourite is the variety of peach known as golden queen in NZ.
It has a firm texture when just ripe but softer flesh when over ripe, is a clingstone and tastes really good when bottled and is great for chutneys. The skin only has a light fuzz.
For bottling, the black boy peach aka peche de vignes aka blood peach is superb, slightly tart even when fully ripe. An added bonus is that it’s a free stone.
White peaches are best off the tree for me, they seem to taste too bland when bottled and not enough texture for chutneys.
I have planted 5 apricots, 6 peaches and 2 nectarines at the community garden where I have a plot and still have countless seedlings in pots and still can’t resist sowing the stones every time I eat a good flavoured stone fruit.
Our region is renowned for growing stone fruit although our community garden site is less than ideal, our trees still produce enough for eating if not preserving.
