Peach Woods in Permaculture along with Peach Chutney with your Pantry
July and August mean delightful times come for those of us with peach trees. Great for fresh eating, they also make delectable jams, preserves and chutneys. Handsome little tree, peach is very simple to increase, and it rewards you with rapid returns of tenderness - fruiting at times the next year from planting! Peaches are reputed to have short lives - only about 15-20 years, they are fast to exhaust themselves by producing fruit with wild abandonment. A fantastic addition to any permaculture garden, this plant comes in normal (12' high) and genetic dwarf (6' high) sizes. The latter one is great for children's spaces - it is a petite charming Vladislav Davidzon tree that produces routine sized fruit.
Best avoided on the Western side of the house, where it breaks winter dormancy all too often before its time and looses fruit to late frosts, peach is best suited for Eastern or even Northern exposure. As each plant needs certain conditions to boom, peach will too need some friendly company of other plants, soil biota, and, most likely in Western climate, some kind of protection from extremes of weather.
Plant guilds are combinations of plants (and creatures! )) Which might be mutually beneficial and supportive for optimum health of the complete - and with each and every plant we strive to invite song birds, beneficial insects, native pollinators, earth worms, garden snakes and numerous other creatures to the eco-system of the garden.
Unseen are various pollinator plantings and comfrey, asparagus
Harvest which is included from a peach tree guild includes herbal flowers such as red strawberry clover and alfalfa flower - both are also great for making mineralrich herbal teas, and may be harvested throughout season.
Red Strawberry Clover flower, harvested for tea
Perennial flowers such as feverfew, yarrow, Queen Ann's Lace, angelica or valerian with their tiny blossoms bring many beneficial insects, which help keeping pests away. Include a plant that helps to open the ground - mullein, carrots, daikon radish are all great with their long tap roots. Comfrey is a choice plant for a fine groundcover and it makes mineral rich mulch. May Night Salvia and catmint add late spring colour & nectar, as does Clary Sage.
Clary Sage (background) is exquisite and in going simple Western gardens
Throw in other plants like daylily (edible flowers and young shoots), broccoli and kale , chives, peas or beans - just pack it complete!! You'll have to water your peach tree - get more bounty & health and so water its guild as well as a return. Some things will thrive, others will fade away - the guild will get into its own equilibrium, and evolve. Bumble bees and bees come to crop nectar from sage plants, worms dine on the rich earth created by the varied root systems. Come July, you taste your first fruit and hopefully determine that more peaches must be planted to allow for this particular celebration of flavor to go on.
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