A peach tree has appeared in my sisier in law's garden

They are not keen gardeners and their large garden is mainly a playground for their seven kids and 3 grandkids but a small tree (that they didn't plant and suspect grew from a dropped pip) is suddenly laden with about seventy peaches!

The fruit are smallish and hard but they are the colour of ripe peaches throughout.
They've picked half to see if they'll ripen on the windowsill and left the rest on the tree.

sooooo, questions
could the fruit be smalll and hard because.....
a) it's been a crap summer
b) it's an immature tree and they'll improve year on year
c) the original stone came from an f1 variety

is this tree (in the middle of the lawn) worth keeping for the fruit?
thanks folks, T xxx

if it's laden and they are indeed are edible then I'd have thought it worth keeping. Fruit takes about three years before you can start picking so sounds like the case there. They reckon to do best on a warm, south facing wall but if it's fruiting that much it sounds though it's happy

We had one in Paris when I was little and the weather's not warm enough there either to have nicely ripened peaches But if/when we get real global warming summers.....

that was my first thought Ade
but I was roundly shouted down

the fruit are definately peachy pink but they are the size of apricots

Taste one

Piccy!!!

The peaches round here have been crud this season, last season fantastic, think it's cos of all the rain earlier on... soooo even if it wasn't going great guns it'd go better guns next season, bet yer...

I'd give it a whirl, if it doesn't behave...heh heh heh....

Be careful!

Peachy-pink but apricot sized might mean it's an ornamental almond: we had loads of them on our road when I was growing up, and they were bitter and poisonous. Gorgeous flowers though. We were taught never to eat them.

moonbells

Peaches need a bit of care, so if they aren't gardeners then maybe it's not the tree for them. They suffer really really badly with peach leaf curl - it makes the leaves red and blistered then curl up and drop off. It is a fungal disease (I think) spread by rain, so I'm quite surprised it's not suffered with all the rain you've had this year. A copper based fungicide is supposed to help, but I never tried it (mine was in a pot, so I moved it into oan unheated greenhouse during winter and early spring).

The blossom is lovely, but comes early, so frosts can be a problem and there tend not to be too many pollinating insects about - so sometimes hand pollination with a soft brush is needed. Having said that if there's plenty fruit on then it doesn't seem to have been a problem this year.

The fruit needs thinning when they are about the size of a walnut, so that the fruit can grow, then they need water while they are swelling and sun to ripen them. Apart from that they are a doddle

Weird, cos the peach tree in lil ol man's garden has been ignored for bout 30 years... fruits beautifully, blind luck, I reckon... we get a box load each year, not this one unfortunately..

Then again, mine keeled over and died in year 1..!

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Think mine suffered from just about everything mentioned in here !!!

bugga