Our peach tree had another surprise in store for me.  I chomped down on one of its luscious fruits...and spit that bite right back out, along with the maggot happily consuming the peach's center.  Yes, nearly every one of our peaches has a little blob of gum on the outside marking the entrance path of these little, white larvae.

The first step in combatting any insect infestation is figuring out what you've got, but I had quite a time identifying my maggot.  My handy Garden Insects of North America narrowed down the playing field to a mere score of "fruit chewers": plum curculio, plum gouger, cherry curculio, speckled green fruit worm, peach twig borer, eyespotted bud moth, oriental fruit moth, navel orangeworm, lesser appleworm, cherry fruit-worm, mineola moth, cherry fruit sawfly, apple maggot, walnut husk fly, cherry fruit fly, western cherry fruit fly, black cherry fruit fly, chokecherry gall midge, European earwig, or green fruit beetles.

An expert at Bug Guide took a look and gave me a tentative ID of coddling moth or oriental fruit moth, the latter of which is more likely as a pest of peaches.  Although most of the mainstream websites tell me to spray chemicals on my tree, an Australian site recommends running chickens in the orchard.  I wonder if putting up a temporary fence around our peach trees and running chickens inside during critical periods in the spring and fall would be sufficient to cut down on our peach damage?

That Australian site (which I am thoroughly impressed by) also suggested some other permaculture style control measures for the oriental fruit moth. My favorite involves taking advantage of the fact that the moth goes through several generations in a year.  Before the fruit are large, the larvae instead grow inside twigs, which are highly visible because they wilt and produce gum.  By cutting off and destroying these infested twigs in the spring, you can cut back the population, which means there won't be adults present to lay eggs on your precious peaches.

A final method of control involves putting out artificial pheremones around the tree.  These pheremones mimic the scent emitted by the female moth when she's trying to attract a mate, so they disrupt the moths' mating behavior.  At four pheremone ties per tree, replaced twice a year, though, this method could add up.

Despite the problematic centers, our white peaches are growing on me.  I cut them in half and scoop out the bad spots, then gulp down half a dozen a day.  Now that they're at their peak of ripeness, I've discovered I prefer homegrown white peaches to storebought yellow peaches!