Alan, From personal experience, I do not chew
the seeds and hence they do not appear to affect the taste of the fruit to
me. It appears to me that the quality about autumn olive consumption
you object to lies in the skin of the fruit. As an experiment, I have
in the past polished them to remove the speckling from the outside of the
skin, which helped somewhat, but peeling the fruit (insanity, I know)
produces a much better experience.
John
--- On Sun, 9/7/08, Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com>
wrote:
From: Alan Haigh
<alandhaigh@gmail.com>
Subject: [NAFEX] autumn olive and peaches
To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Sunday, September 7, 2008, 8:33 AM
OK, I thought I might get into trouble siting
alum as the source of puckeryness, I thought that was the compound that made
pecan shells so unpalatable- that's how my autumn olives taste and it is
transferred to the preserves because I know of no adequately gentle way of
removing the seeds without getting their flavor in the juice. I'm in
the northeast so it's highly possible that we lack the heat units to properly
ripen the Hidden Springs cultivars which is precisely my point. I still
defy you to find another member with experience with autumn olive who doesn't
consider them extremely fragrant where ever in the country they grow them.
On the subject of low-acid peaches I think that the
omnipresence of corn-sweetners in the American diet has predisposed people to
a desire for ever sweeter fruit. No surprise that peaches as sweet as
breakfast cereal would have a marketing advantage. The same thing has
occured with sugar enhanced sweet corn over the years. The main reason
I save some room in my garden for sweet corn is to savor the old fashioned
taste of corn on the cob that doesn't taste like
candy. Fortunately not all peach breeders are focusing on
producing low-acid fruit. I already mentioned Coralstar. Another
variety with some acid is Harrow Diamond. I'm curious about varieties
other members grow to fill this bill. As I recall the old Indian Blood
peach had a lot of zing although I don't grow it.
Incidentally there has been a lot of mention of
fighting brown-rot in peaches and it was a tough season here on that score as
well. I use Indar to protect my stone fruit and generallly can control
brown-rot with bi-weekly applications starting in early July and stoppiing
about a month before harvest. I don't have to protect my earliest
peaches such as Harrow Diamond. Timing should of course be moved up in
more southern areas.
I wish more breeders in this country looked at
brown-rot susceptibility when making their selections. As is, many of
the older varieties are better on this score than recent releases. The Harrow breeding station takes this into consideration
and many of their varieties have some resistance- apricots and peaches.
I mentioned Harrow Diamond, in a later peach I believe Harcrest is relatively
resistant.
Late varieties tend to be the most susceptable and
Lady Nancy and Autumn Glo are amongst the most likely to rot that I
grow. Elberta, I guess being an old fashioned variety, has some
resistance and on some sites I can manage it without fungicide here.
Alan Haigh, the Home Orchard Co.
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