The Time Capsule | Roy Marshall
While some view California as a land overflowing with fruit, nuts and Michael Moore, there’s a fellow from the northern part of that state who believes we Iowans have issues as well.
Jeff Eagan, who tends an heirloom orchard and nursery a few miles south of the Oregon border, cites the Polly. Polly was conceived in Iowa, born in this state, served well and faithfully for decades. Then, Eagan says, we ditched her because of the color of her skin.
John Hanika, who owns and manages the Nodaway Valley Tree Farm north of Prescott, says she hasn’t been completely forsaken.
“I love the Polly,” he told me, and said he has a few customers who do so as well.
If your grandparents lived in Iowa and had a peach tree, there’s a good chance it was a Polly. Old timers relished a fresh, juicy, tree-ripened peach. They also knew commercial types, grown to be picked, hard enough to be packed, green enough to be shipped, weren’t as good. Our early settlers, though, couldn’t buy even them. Attempts to grow peaches failed as trees succumbed to Iowa winters.
More than a century ago, horticulturists at the University of Iowa set out to develop a peach suitable for Midwest weather.
They spent years working with various strains and rootstock grafts and eventually came up with the Polly. She was tested in the 20s, made available to the public in about 1930. She was soon the peach tree of choice in the Hawkeye State.
Polly (some sources say she was named for one of the developers) proved to be a good one. Winter didn’t stop her, she blossomed reasonably late, her yield was measured in buckets. Each of my grandmothers had a Polly. They were well-shaped, 20 to 30 feet, sturdy enough a child could stand on a branch and hand down the beauties. When my wife and I were newly married, we moved into a very old home that had a very old Polly. She had all the peaches we wanted and enough to give away.
Yet, with all this, her popularity declined. You’re not likely to find one at local garden centers, and they’re not listed in any of the numerous mail order catalogues we receive. Eagan says the Polly had a fatal drawback. She’s white.
Back in the 1930s, this wasn’t held against her. She produced, tasted wonderful, and there was nothing else that did the job in our weather. Eagan believes consumers later became conditioned to think of a peach as being a certain color. Georgia is the peach state. Georgia peaches were the standard by which others were measured. Georgia peaches are identified with a distinctive color, and it isn’t white. Eagan points out that kids since the 1950s have had canned peaches provided by the school lunch program. Those peaches have always been yellow – the bright yellow produced with artificial coloring.
“Reliance” and similar varieties of yellow peaches, developed in the 1960s, were supposedly hardy to Zone 4. They soon captured the market. I’ve owned about 20 of them. They mostly live to die in Iowa winters. I’ve never found a reliable Reliance. They produce a fruit or occasionally a few, but they’re not consistent and – for me at least – give their best service as wood smoke for barbecue. I know other Iowans, some of them good at this, that do no better. None has a tree able to crank out fruit as abundantly as did Grandma’s Polly.
Eagan said white peaches and nectarines have recently been developed that stay firm enough for shipment, and therefore are available in the produce aisle. He thinks this could make the color more acceptable and, if so, help bring Polly back home.
This may be happening. Hanika had a few Polly trees this spring. They sold out early. “They’re great trees,” he told me. “The only drawback is that sometimes they set a crop so heavy it has to be culled or branches will break.”
I can deal with that. Polly – regardless of color – really is a sweet old peach.
Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.