Epitaph for a Peach by David M. Masumoto

trees, and their tiny peaches are stunted without the intervention of some type of fertilizer. The race quickly turns into a sprint.
    By the middle of April, with only a little over a month away from harvest, my first Spring Lady peaches were still the size of dried prunes. Dad is right, I thought, I can’t fool nature. But the old Mexican worker was correct too. The trees were planted, I had a crop hanging, and so, “What can I do?”
    My options were limited. A fertility program of compost would take months, if not years, to have an effect. I craved a quick fix, a steroid for peaches. They have one for grapes called gibberellic acid, a growth hormone modeled after a natural enzyme in grapes. But there isn’t one for peaches.
    I could experiment with a foliar feed, which pumps up the peaches, sort of like quick-acting vitamins. Some farmers have success with micronutrients, applying magnesium, sulfates, zinc, and calcium directly onto leaves. Others promote elixirs ranging from soup mixes of assorted natural elements like dried blood, fruit wax, bat guano (the catalog said “soak in water and use as guano tea”), and—the standby of organic gardeners—fish emulsion.
    Perhaps because I am Japanese I seem to have an affinity for the seaweed-kelp foliar feeds. Kelp contains high levels of minerals, vitamins, enzymes, and natural-growth hormones and is world famous, at least that’s how the brochure describes it. An advertisement from a different company promotes the “natural additives” of another concoction that includes Icelandic kelp (as opposed to Norwegian), molasses, coconut oil, garlic, onion, yeast, and more.
    I began mixing the kelp and it smelled terrible. I hesitated before pouring it into my sprayer, envisioning five acres of beautiful fruit, each peach tasting slightly of seaweed. Could I market my fruit as an “oriental” variety, a rediscovery of the Asian roots of the original peach? But as it blended with the five hundred gallons of water in the tank, only a light green tinge stained the water.
    I hoped to cover the entire tree—leaves, bark, and tiny fruit—with a gentle mist that coated the surface like a fog embracing the tree. While I was spraying, the breeze shifted and the mixture wet my face. I felt a tingling, probably more from the cold water and the cool spring temperatures than the seaweed. But as I felt the air brushing my cheeks and the chill of the moisture on my back, I knew I was sprinting.
    With the short growing season, a slight mistake and a stumble and I’m out of the race. A contradiction as I try to work with nature? But isn’t farming a compromise with nature? The day the first farmer stopped hunting and gathering and planted a seed, the contest was begun.
    The best farmers know how to coax nature, massage and nudge her along. With seaweed sprays I could neutralize the negative effects of light soils and hope to make amends for selecting the wrong peach variety. The ultimate answer might be to bulldoze my Spring Lady trees and plant something that better matches my farm. But an interim solution might be to keep building my soils, hoping that eventually good earth would compensate for human errors and I could stop micromanaging with Band-Aid foliar sprays.
    In May we harvested good Spring Lady peaches. They grew to a nice full size, and the market prices justified all the extra work. I felt a sense of accomplishment, proving to the world that I could grow decent early peaches despite my light ground.
    I still believe that Sun Crest peaches are the perfect crop for my soils and climate, and their flavor and sweet juices just confirm that belief. Yet when I stare at my Spring Lady orchard, I see a world full of farmers sprinting with their fruits. We think nudging nature along can’t hurt, and, after all, what’s so bad about making a little money early in the season?
    Zen and the Peach Twig Borer
    It hatches with the