Here in Ottawa valley in Ontario, garden zone 5a it is the month where ideally we will be pruning hard fruit trees of all kinds. Long time readers know that i have been and continue to be active with other amazing fellow local gardeners to creating local food sheds.

These photos are used with permission given as they were taken at one of my “gifted” out placement spots.. this is a wind zone, the wind blows from the open farm fields all the time, unlimited water and this owner has been excellent about having me out to help her in terms of pruning the tree, what you are looking at is one trees fruit.

One of these ripple effect programs is Sib C peaches, a number of years ago a lovely women in ottawa grew the “mother tree” with great success and she shared saved peach pits wide and far across the community, i got a small bag of pits myself and in the end also was gifted someone’s pits as well, in total i raised 15 peach seedlings, I split them out among friends, some had different soil types, some had shelter belts, others wide open wind swept placements, other still were one zone warmed and I also grew my own here on the farm in different placements.

Those first peach trees have come full circle and are now the proud producers of bushels of peaches, with the best pits from different trees being selected, shared out and in some cases grown out, last year i hand selected, grew out and sold into my local community another 100 plus peach trees.

I am uncertain given the drought on how many of my young peach trees will be alive come this spring, and my oldest need some heavy pruning this year as it was missed last year. I look forward to hearing how it goes with different farms and gardens and i will be excited to collect peach pits this fall from the biggest, most perfect fruits for saving, sharing and some limited growing out.

There is something wonderful knowing that currently dozens of families and soon enough hundreds of families are enjoying locally grown fruit that however briefly came though my world and onward in hopefully ripple effects for years to come. The idea that a child when i am long gone will be reaching up and picking sun warmed ripe peaches in sept or early oct and biting in with juice running down their arm makes me smile.

I am happy to say that many places now offer Sib C peaches for sale online across canada, some are even doing as i am, selectively breeding for size, texture and taste. I am hopeful that will continue to see a impact in the future as we all work towards bringing these amazing hardy white fleshed peaches into the gardens and kitchens across canada and beyond.

I am looking forward to donating one or more of these to our towns new community garden that is working with our local middle and high school, they have a greenhouse, a garden and are working on a small orchard, with the culinary class making food from the fresh offerings, i see peach cobbler and pies and more in their future!

If you would like to add a tree or three to your own garden or homestead, I will be offering peach pits late fall for those that would like to try growing themselves and we will have limited peach seedlings available for sale spring of 2027