The oyster mushroom gets its name from its cap which, some say, resembles an oyster. The stem of the oyster mushrooms is perhaps more distinct; it unfurls something like one of those old-time paper lady's fans. The oyster mushroom has...

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How to Grow Peaches

The peach is a semi-hardy deciduous woody perennial tree. A standard-sized peach tree will grow to 25 feet tall and just as wide if not pruned. A dwarf peach will grow to 6 feet tall and wide. For the best productivity, keep standard peaches pruned to about 15 feet tall. Most available peach varieties are grafted, meaning the root system and the fruiting section of the tree is different.

Peaches usually come to harvest from mid- to late summer. Peach fruit requires 3 to 5 months to reach harvest from the time flowers are pollinated. Peach trees have fruit producing lives of about 12 years.

Peaches are divided into freestone and clingstone cultivars. The flesh of a freestone peach will separate easily from the seed. The flesh of a clingstone peach does not. Freestone peaches are best for eating fresh out of hand. Clingstone peaches are a good choice for cooking and preserving.

The flesh of the peach fruit is most often yellow, but some cultivars have white flesh. White flesh, like yellow flesh, is tender and tasty.

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Peaches

Half a peach poached in syrup served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream topped with raspberry purée: peach Melba.

Barely chilled peach slices served with sugar and cream: peach Mom.

Auguste Escoffier--the most famous chef of his time--created peach Melba in 1892 in honor of the Australian opera singer Nellie Melba.

Peach Mom has been served much longer. It remains a favorite.

The success of any peach dish is a tender and sweet peach. The key to finding a tender and sweet peach is a gentle squeeze. A soft-fleshed peach is ready for the table or eating out of hand. It will be sweet and juicy and melt in your mouth.

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Peach Soup or Soupe Aux Pêches

Is this soup or dessert? Yes, it is!

You can fancy up the name of this dish, but don't expect it to be around for more than one sitting.

Ripe peaches are hard to beat eaten out of hand, but sometimes it's fun to give fresh harvest a new twist. This recipe will take just a few minutes to come together. The hard part is the 3 or so hours of chilling in the refrigerator that makes this soup perfect for a summer evening.

I picked up ripe peaches at the farmers' market and set four aside for this soup; I mean dessert. I chose yellow peaches; these were 'Flavorcrest' which are large and round with a smooth textured flesh.

Now, this recipe calls for cardamom, a relative of ginger, which you no doubt know is a bit pricey. Cardamom comes originally from subtropical India and its fruit--nut-like pods--do not ripen at the same time thus requiring hand harvesting. If cardamom is a bit much, you can substitute ground cinnamon to taste. By giving up the cardamom, you'll lose its lemony-flowery undertones.

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Peach Salad with Walnut Vinaigrette

Here is a quick and tasty lunch or dinner salad that combines the best of summer flavors. Sweet just picked butter lettuce and ripe peaches are perfect with this light, nutty, walnut-flavored vinaigrette. You'll find the flavors gently bounce off one another.

For this salad, I picked an heirloom red butter lettuce from the garden and matched it with ripe yellow peaches from the farmers' market. The lettuce was full and buttery and the peaches were dripping sweet.

The vinaigrette features walnut oil. Walnut oil is quite delicate, light colored with a rich, nutty flavor. Dab some oil on your finger for a taste and smell ahead of time. Walnut oil is best in cold dishes and salad dressings where you will easily recognized its flavor. Used in cooking, walnut oil can be a bit bitter.

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Peaches in the Kitchen

Syrupy sweet tasting white-fleshed peaches; the sweet peach-scent of golden clingstones: it must be peach season!

The harvest season for peaches is late spring through late fall with the peak peach harvest just a month away from mid- to late-summer.

You've probably already had some peach choices at the farm store. Here's what I look for during peach season:

Choose peaches that are sweetly fragrant, unblemished, and not too hard. A ripe peach will be soft to the touch. Look for peaches that are yellow or cream-colored at the stem end with a well-defined crease or partition line. A peach with a pronounced partition line will split easily.

The color of a peach--such as a crimson blush--indicates variety, not maturity.

Avoid green colored peaches. A peach with green shoulders on the stem end will not be ripe. Avoid peaches with large flattened bruises or shriveling skin.

One pound peaches (3 medium-size or 2 large) yields 1½ to 2 cups sliced fruit.

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Aprium-Peach Cobbler

The fruit cobbler has an interesting history. It was invented in America sometime in the middle of the the nineteenth century. Where is not exactly clear; some say the midwest; others say the west. The names of American cobblers are a study in themselves: the Betty, the Grunt, the Slump, the Buckle, and the Sonker. And those don't include the Crisp or the Crumble.

Here is a tasty Aprium-Peach Cobbler that you can put together easily in late spring, when the universes of ripe apriums and peaches intersect. Now, this could have been an aprium cobbler, or a peach cobbler, or an apricot cobbler. But the apriums and the peaches were just a few steps apart at the farmers' market, so aprium-peach cobbler it was.

As you will see there is a bit of lemon zest added to this recipe. That's because the aprium and the peach are both quite sugary and sweet. If you decide to use a berry, such as a raspberry, in place of the peach or aprium, the tart berries will balance the flavors and bit less lemon zest will do. You can have fun with this recipe substituting nectarines for peaches or plums for the apriums. This could be a peach-raspberry cobbler or a peach-plum cobbler or....well, just have fun!

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Donut Peach

A peach that is juicy and sweet—many say the best tasting of all peaches—and creamy with a pit that does not cling wrapped in a nearly fuzzless skin: I want that peach!

That is the almost ancient Chinese pan tao peach which also is called peento peach, Chinese flat peach, saucer peach, and Saturn peach—as in the rings of Saturn which this peach looks a bit like when its pit is popped from it flattened center.

Marketing has taken over the pan tao peach. You are most likely to find it displayed under the name Donut Peach, as in doughnut. Some have even thought to box these flattened peaches up like a box of deep-fried ring-shaped pastries. (After tasting a donut peach, you can decide which is more flavorful and better for you.)

The donut shaped pan tao peach will fit in the palm of your hand; it’s about 3 to 3½ inches (7.6-8.9 cm) across and half as tall. Size—and all of the attributes listed above—make this one of the best peaches for eating out of hand. But you can use the donut peach like any other peach: serve alone as a snack, add to fruits salads, make into pies, tarts, and cakes, bake into muffins, chop and add to salsa, or grill with other summer fruits.

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Peach Varieties

There are more than 2,000 varieties of peaches. That’s a lot to choose from.

There is no better way to pick a peach (and spend a day) than taste testing peaches at your local farm market. There is a favorite peach taste for everybody.

To find the best peach, first take a whiff: a ripe peach should be sweetly fragrant. Next give the peach a gentle squeeze: a ripe peach won’t be too hard; it should be soft to the squeeze. Keep in mind that the color of a peach tells more about what variety it is than its maturity or ripeness. So don’t assume the best peach has a peachy color; it could be more white or greenish white than peach colored.

And remember that different peach varieties come to harvest at different times of the summer. So you should be able to find a ripe peach—of one variety or another—from late spring all the way to Halloween.

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Peaches

Half a peach poached in syrup served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream topped with raspberry purée: peach Melba.

Barely chilled peach slices served with sugar and cream: peach Mom.

Auguste Escoffier—the most famous chef of his time--created peach Melba in 1892 in honor of the Australian opera singer Nellie Melba.

Peach Mom has been served much longer. It remains a favorite.

Peaches ripen with warming weather. There are early, mid-season, and late season ripening peaches so depending upon where you live and the variety of peaches available peach season can stretch from May to Halloween.

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