How do you produce peaches?

Answer 1

Mature peaches (those that aren't hard or green) will continue to ripen after they are picked. Set them stem-side down not touching one another. If your peaches are perfectly ripe but you aren't quite ready to eat them, store them in the refridgerator. The cold will radically slow down their ripening. Check chilled peaches frequently, because the cold air in the refrigerator is dehydrating, so eat them before their skin wrinkles, which is a sign of both drying and over-ripening.

If your peaches need a bit more ripening, keep them on the kitchen counter. Put peaches that are still quite firm in a paper bag - it will capture the ethylene gas they give off and speed ripening. You can add a banana - the riper the better - or an apple or pear to the bag. These fruits give off even more ethylene than peaches and will hasten the ripening of the peaches. If you keep peaches on the counter or used the paper bag method, check them frequently. When any peach is ripe, be sure to eat it or move it to the fridge until you're ready to eat it so it doesn't go from ripe to rotten. In all cases, peaches need to breathe, so paper bags or no bags are your best bet. Just remember, the paper bag will hasten their ripening unless you put it in the fridge.

If you can't eat all the peaches at hand quickly enough, you can freeze them. Frozen peaches are delicious in baked goods, smoothies, and ice cream. Prepare the peaches for freezing by peeling and slicing them. Lay the peeled peach slices in a single layer on a baking sheet. If you want to minimize clean-up, go ahead and line the baking sheet with parchment paper or wax paper first. Set the baking sheet in a freezer until peaches are frozen through, at least four hours and up to overnight. Transfer the frozen peach slices to a resealable container, seal (pushing out as much air as possible), and return the peaches to the freezer until you're ready to use them. Frozen peaches will keep up to 6 months in a refrigerator-freezer combo and up to 12 months in a stand-alone freezer.

Answer 2

You may find fresh peaches from April through October, but they will be at their very best from June until the end of August. Cooler climates may produce local harvests in July and August and into September. Peach trees flower fairly early in the spring and the flowers are easily damaged or killed by temperatures below about 28° F (−4° C). So you won’t find local peaches in places where temperatures dip below freezing well into spring.

Buy organic. Peaches are among the produce that normally rank highest in contaminants. For a full list, check out the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen. Supermarkets are steadily increasing their organic offerings, and the spread of farmers markets around the U.S. has added to the availability of organic produce.

Peaches can truly ripen, not just soften and rot, after they’ve been picked, so you can buy mature peaches and finish ripening them at home. Ripe yellow-fleshed peaches should have a golden hue behind their reddish blush, which is not a sign of ripeness, but just of where the sun shone on the peach. This coloration is easiest to see that the stem end, since little sun hits the peach there and they don’t tend to develop any blush. Lighter yellow color means a less-ripe peach. Avoid peaches with a green tinge, bruises, scratches, flat areas, or wrinkly skin.

Peaches should smell like what you want them to taste like. No smell usually means an under-ripe peach. Like any fruit, peaches should feel heavy for their size. Hold the peach in the palm of your hand and gently squeeze with your whole fingers to gauge how hard or soft the peach is. Avoid Baseball-hard peaches: they were picked before being ready and most likely will never ripen properly. Tennis ball-like peaches are not ready to eat, but you can take them home for ripening to eat later in the week. Soft peaches will bruise slightly when you squeeze. These are ready to eat right now.

Mealy peaches are almost always the result of peaches being picked either very green or very ripe and then chilled, then brought to room temperature. Avoid any vendor that sells you a mealy peach.

Answer 3

To select the best peaches you will want peaches that have no blemishes, have no green color and are firm, but are not rock hard.