Stone Fruits For Coastal Southern California

I love traveling; so many places to visit, so little time. Do you feel the same way? When I travel I love to immerse myself in local foods as much as visiting local landmarks, and taking in the scenery.
One of my more memorable trips was an excursion through British Columbia. We rented a motor home and after time in Victoria and Vancouver struck out for the east on the trans Canada highway. At almost every stop we picked wild blackberries by the side of the road. We ate berries and cream, made berry cobbler, had pound cake with blackberries, pancakes with blackberries. Mmmmm, I can still taste them.

We reached a beautiful area in the rain shadow desert of the Okanagan valley. Blackberries were wonderful, but now we were in the land of stone fruits. It is one of the premier growing areas for apples, cherries, blueberries, and peaches. Oh, the peaches. Everywhere, there were small farm stands piled high with local produce; fat juicy blueberries fairly exploding in our mouths with sweet dark juice and fruit. But the very best spots were the "pick your own" farms.

While it is wonderful to see all the fruit piled on counters, there is nothing for a gardener or farmer as rapturous as walking between rows of trees, hearing the birds, and inhaling the ambrosial aroma of fresh ripe peaches. There is no better way to discern a fruit's ripeness than using your nose. I never pick citrus until I smell the fully mature lusciousness hanging like a fragrant cloud around the tree. Near Penticton, we stopped at a "U-pick" that had the biggest peaches I had ever seen. Maybe it was hunger, maybe it was the pleasantness of those hills, the orchards, the lake, but I have never seen peaches so big, nor any that ever smelled that good. I can still taste them.

 Peaches are delicate little things. They are soft. They bruise so easily. For a farmer to ship them, they pick them when they are hard as rocks, there is no fragrance to them at all. Off the tree, they never quite ripen as they should. I have a perfect solution to rock hard, dry, scent free peaches and stone fruits. Grow your own!

I know, I know, it is too warm here to grow stone fruits, especially near the coast. Apples, peaches, nectarines, cherries, and plums are for the Canadians to grow, or at least folks in Wynola or Julian. We southern Californians should not get uppity, mind our manners, and stick to the citrus and the avocados. We already have the beach, and perfect weather...we should let folks grow the stone fruits that have nothing else to look forward to. Well, let me tell you a little secret. You can grow stone fruits on the coast, that will rival anything you have ever seen from a fruit stand in British Columbia.

If you are in true coastal SoCal, you will have to make a couple of concessions. Forget the apricots. Yea, I know, I love them too, but forget it. I have tried so many varieties on the coast, and they perform marginally at best, and it takes yeeeaaaarrss to even realize it is going to be a failure. Plums? If you are a true coastal dweller...iffy. I see some do fairly well, but for the most part, no.

Reduce your stress levels, don't set the bar so high, stick to the easy pick "low hanging fruit." There are some tried and true, reliable producers that will do just fine here, thank you. In the next five enties in the blog, I will give you my top five stone fruits for coastal SoCal. You can have a little fruit stand heaven right in your own back yard.