Summer Bummer!

I can't believe it!  After I just said yesterday how important proper pruning is so that you have a nice, strong branch structure on your fruit trees, I came home today and found this:

It split right down the middle.  The weight of all those peaches was just too much for my poor tree.  This is what I get for bragging, I guess.  I'm so bummed.  I guess you can have too much of a good thing.

My only consolation is that I've heard that my dear old dad was kind of a slum lord with his purple martin houses this year.  Oh, well...

Peaches

Peaches are about the only thing I got out of the garden last year, and it looks like it's going to be the same again this year unless I get a few late-season habaneros and tomatoes.

They're still a little green, but Sam and I ate a few tonight anyways.  They're tart with just a light sweetness.  If I can keep the ants off of them, they'll make for good eating soon!

(These are Elberta peaches, by the way.)

These two pictures show the branching structure of the tree (as well as how it looks like it's about to split in half from the weight of all the fruit!).  You want to prune fruit trees so that they have open centers with branches at wide angles which makes them nice and strong so they'll bear the weight of the fruit.

Take that, Dad - loads of peaches!