We bought a bushel of peaches tonight from a man who lives up the road from us. Actually, half a bushel is for us, the other half was for my Mother-In-Law. They are beautiful peaches too, just picked yesterday! And boy, let me tell you, the flavor is outstanding.
However, one question puzzled me: Just how many peaches are in a bushel?
One bushel equals about 50 lbs. of peaches. So one bushel = about 50 pounds of peaches. One pound of peaches = 3 medium peaches, so one bushel has 150 peaches.
Of course, it doesn’t matter what size the peaches are, since it all comes down to weight. It’s easiest to figure out exactly how much you have by using a kitchen scale, but if you don’t have one, it’s pretty easy to estimate that a bushel is about 50 lbs.
If that sounds like a lot of peaches, you would be correct! Needless to say, it’s probably unlikely that you’ll be able to eat up 50 lbs of peaches before they spoil, so you’ll be needing to do something with all the excess.
In this article, I’ll not only break down some of the most common peach conversion measurements, but I’ll also give you some ideas for what to do with all those tasty peaches you harvested!
How Many Peaches Are in a Bushel?
The easiest way to figure out how many peaches you are working with is, of course, to measure them on a food scale or kitchen weight scale. Many of the best scales show both metric and conventional measurements to save your time. These tools are extremely handy and easy to use so you don’t have to “guess”-timate any more.
If you’re wondering how many peaches are in a bushel, the short answer is that one bushel yields about 50 pounds of peaches. If you want one cup of sliced peaches, you’ll need about two medium sized peaches. For pureed peach, you’ll need three to four peaches. One pound of peaches is about three medium-sized peaches, too.
Peach Measurements
If you’re going to do anything with your fresh peaches, it will be helpful for you to know a few of the most common peach conversions and measurements.
Here are some peach measurements for you, for future reference:
- One bushel = about 50 pounds of peaches
- One pound of peaches = 3 medium or 2 large peaches
- One pound = about 4 cups sliced peaches
- About 10 peaches will make a 9 inch pie.
- One bushel = about 12 quarts of canned peaches (from what I’ve read)
- A peck is a quarter of a bushel
How Long Do Peaches Last?
Wondering how long peaches are good for? Unless you’re feeding a small army, I hate to break it to you but you probably won’t be able to eat the entire bushel of peaches before it goes bad.
In most cases, peaches will only last up to three days at room temperature. After three days, they’ll be fully ripened and they won’t last long after that point. Storing your peaches in a paper bag will make them ripen even faster.
You can make peaches last a bit longer by smashing them in the fridge, ideally inside a plastic bag. This should help them last another week or so. However, it’s important to note that peaches stored in the refrigerator until they are fully ripe won’t taste as good as those that are allowed to ripen on the counter at room temperature.
How to Tell if a Peach is Fresh
Not sure if the peaches you just brought home are fresh? If you plan on preserving your peaches in any way – which I’ll get to next – it’s important that you start with the highest-quality produce. You can easily check the freshness of your peaches by giving them a gentle squeeze. Squeeze firmly but not too hard, checking to see if the fruit gives at all between your fingers. Ripe peaches are extremely soft, so plan on using soft peaches as soon as possible.
You should also take a look at the peach’s appearance. A peach that has a deep golden yellow color will be sweet and ripe – a bit of red doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t necessarily give any indication of how ripe the fruit is. You should also look at the skin around the stem. If there are wrinkles, it’s a nice, ripe peach. Peaches become wrinkly when water begins to leave the fruit. This also causes the flavor to be more intense.
Before you eat or preserve your peaches, be sure to check them thoroughly for any oozing or dark spots. An overripe peach will be soft and somewhat mushy, which doesn’t mean you can’t use it – however, if you notice mold or the fruit smells off, you may want to avoid using it if possible.
How to Preserve Peaches
For the most part, I always can my fresh peaches, but that’s far from being your only option.
Before preserving peaches in any way – freeze drying, dehydrating, or canning – you will need to remove the skins. If you leave the skins on, they’ll be too chewy after drying and very slimy after being canned. You can peel each peach one by one, or you can blanch them first.
If you’re familiar with the process of blanching and peeling tomatoes, then the process won’t be too different for your peaches. You will need to submerge the peaches in a large pot of boiling water for about one minute, then remove them and dip them in chilled water until they’re cool enough to handle. You can’t slip off the skins and process the peaches as you normally would.
Many people cold pack peaches, which involves loading the fruit into jars at room temperature and then adding boiling syrup. This allows the peaches to stay much firmer after they’ve been canned. The syrup is easy to make, too – you will just need five cups of water and around two cups of sugar.
You can alo dehydrate the peaches, which is a great way to produce lots of dried peaches for trail mix! You can dehydrate the whole peach or you can cut them in half. You can leave the skin on, but again, they’ll be somewhat tough. In most cases, you can dry peach slices in a commercial dehydrator overnight, drying at around 140 degrees or until the fruit is crisp or leathery.
One extra tip when dehydrating peaches is to dip them in lemon water first. You won’t notice the lemony flavor after they’ve been dried, but the acidity in the lemon juice will help prevent them from browning. Browning doesn’t cause the slices to taste bad in any way, but it can be somewhat unappealing to look at.
Of course, you can always freeze your peaches, too. I recommend feeding each of the peach slices individually, on a baking sheet, before you stash the slices in freezer bags. This is a good idea because it will prevent them from clumping together.
Don’t forget – you can always make peach jam, too! All you’ll need is a water bath canner and you can make tons of peach jam to enjoy on ice cream, toast, or even Brie cheese (my personal favorite).
Using Fresh Peaches: My Plans
I plan on canning all of my fresh peaches this week. My kids eat a ton of canned peaches, it’ll be nice having some that were locally grown. I wish I could have gotten more, but our budget only allowed for what we got. The man was selling them for $22 per half bushel. I wasn’t sure if that was a good deal at first or not, it sounded pretty high to me.
Really, I didn’t know how many peaches came to a bushel, so when we got home we counted them out. The man was generous with what he gave us. There were 116 med-large peaches. I looked it up, and an average bushel of peaches weighs 50 lbs. I think ours was closer to 60 lbs. So, I think we got a pretty good deal; still cheaper (and better!) than the grocery stores.
But on top of that, he also let us pick all of the raspberries we could find from his raspberry bushes, and he sent us home with two watermelons from his garden. He apologized that I wasn’t able to get more raspberries, as somebody just came yesterday and cleaned him out.
But he welcomed me to come back again soon as more berries will be coming in. (I think he was so generous to us ’cause I brought him some cookies, grin.)
I will definitely be taking him up on his offer! I was able to scrounge up about four cups of berries, so we’ll be enjoying them tomorrow. I think the kids probably ate a couple of cups worth of berries right off of the bushes too!
This will be my first attempt at canning peaches. I’ll be sure to post a recipe and “how to” when I’ve got them all finished up. I’m wondering if I can save the pits and grow my own peach trees from them. Any ideas?
updated 11/30/2020 by Rebekah Pierce
A city girl learning to homestead on an acre of land in the country. Wife and homeschooling mother of four. Enjoying life, and everything that has to do with self sufficient living.
To all my Love Peaches friends: Does anyone have a good recipe for canned peaches with NO SUGAR. Does anyone have a recipe for pickled peaches and again NO SUGAR. Thank You in advance.
Going thru Georgia and would like to stop and buy some peaches but need an address.Are you near Rte 95?
Im from idaho. I think your peach prices are pretty high, but that might be normal for bigger city or country. Im picking up elberta peaches this week for $15/22lbs.
Canning peaches is fairly easy, but time consuming if you are doing by yourself. If you would like a good reference here is a lady’s blog that i follow. Ruralrevolution.Com by Patricia Lewis. She shows photos along with directions of how tos!
Good luck with canning.
Email me from my experience I’ll be able to tell you everything about growing trees start to finish
June 30, 2016
Just bought two half bushels of South Carolina peaches. $28 per half bushel. When I laid them out at home there were 160 peaches in that bushel. Medium size. BTW, each half bushel basket weight nearly 27 pounds. thanks for all the ideas.
I’m not sure if anyone has answered this yet but if you let your peach pits dry out and then Crack them open you can plant the seed for a tree. Since the peaches are local you have a great chance of them growing. The best time to plant peach seeds is in the fall so store the seeds in the fridge until then.
Btw, one can make peach jelly using the cleaned skins. Boil then run thru strainer before adding pectin. Great use of skins & makes great jelly. You can boil the skins in advance, saving the prepared juice for canni g at later date. If sometime away, will have to freeze. The same applies for plums.
Kathy
Reading your article today. Interested to find current cost of 22 lbs of peaches. Locally, the Tx peach crop has been affected by weather. Not a good year. Per you article, 22 lbs would be almost a half bushel. Local Kiwanis Club wants $40. Calling our fav peach farm in Stonewall, the Flaming Prince variety availability is unknown at this time. Typically, this variety is ready in July-Aug. I can every year and frz for future use. This is our absolute fav! So, do you have any idea what is a good price, currentlt, with these conditions?
Thank you,
KATHY
Kathy,
I wish I knew what to tell you, but it really does depend upon your area and the crops. I don’t even know what they’re going for in our area, to tell you the truth. But I think most farmers try to price their produce close to what others are selling it at, to be competitive, so you may not find much of a price difference from one to another. Thanks for the peach skin jelly suggestion! Sounds yummy!
FYI about your peach pits. I learned from my mom to boil the pits and use the juice from that to make peach pit jelly. It is really good and I love knowing that I am using almost everything.
Deonne,
I LOVE that!! Thank you so much for sharing that tip. I’ll definitely have to give that a try 🙂
We bought peaches this year from an Amish neighbor who had them brought up from Georgia for $26 a full bushel. I don’t know about growing the tree from the seeds but you can make jelly (not approved or endorsed by the county extension offices).
Julie
Thankfully, I am a long time friend of Mrs. Holly Crawford that got the $8/half bushels so now I am in peaches, too!! 🙂 Thanks again, Holly.
My husband worked at a nursery years ago budding different trees and he tells me you can grow your peach seed into a tree. However to get the peaches you want you have to cut it off about 2 inches above the ground (when it’s about as big around as a pencil, probably about 2 ft tall.) Then you cut a little T in top of that and get a bud off the kind of peach tree you want and stick that bud into the T cut and wrap a rubber band around it. It should start growing in about 2 weeks. Then he said something about keeping the suckers cut off, I think the suckers would be from the original tree and you’d only want to grow the bud…
Hope that helps 🙂
I always can peach pie filling and use the peelings for jelly. Peach Pie filling is pretty easy but you really need to use ClearJel instead of regular cornstarch and it’s hard to come by, unless you have an Amish store nearby. They usually sell it pretty cheap. ClearJel doesn’t turn cloudy and and is more suited to canning than regular cornstarch. It makes beautiful pie filling and it is to die for YUMMY!
This is great website that use quite often….This is a link to the peach butter that I made and it was great!!!!! Let me know if you decide to use and if you like it…
http://www.pickyourown.org/peachbutter.htm
someone we know was selling different kinds of produce this summer, and he had some peaches that he said were about too ripe, he gave me a big box full, and they were great! I only threw away , maybe three or four. Ive never heard of peach butter, but it sounds like it would be yummy! uh…Kendra? peach butter recipe? sure sounds good!
You got a huge amount of peaches there! I’m going to get some peaches from our local roadside stand today too. Last time he gave me close to a bushel free of “bad” peaches that had bad spots on them. I called a friend over and we quickly peeled, cut and froze them. That was only a short month ago and they’re already gone 🙁
Peaches are the true glory of this season. Your post was very inspiring. I can’t wait to see your canning post 🙂
Well I have been blessed by some great friends that can…They went to an auction and bought a bulk amount for $8 a half bushel…But everywhere else I checked around here was selling for $24 a half bushel…so you probably got a good deal…but it would be great if you could hit one of those auctions with several of your friends and get a better deal…I will be praying that you get more peaches at a better deal the next time…Also I diced a bunch of my peaches in smaller jars (half pint or pint jars) so my boys can have a healthy snack thru out the year…they are like kids in a candy store when I pull a jar out of the cabinet, all jumping around excited to see who gets the first bite 🙂 this makes it worth while to see them so happy to eat something I have prepared for them 🙂 I also made peach butter this year and it is great…I am planning on making some peach jelly ( I have never heard to make it out of the peeling-thanks to Cathy for a great idea ) anyways…happy canning your peaches, and don’t eat too many like I have while I was cutting them up *wink* 😉
Peach jelly is wonderful. You make it with the peelings simialr to apple jelly. Babs
While you can get a tree from peach seeds they will not be like the ones at the orchard. Those are grafted. The trees from seed will be much larger and it takes a long time for them to bloom and have fruit (+10 years) and the fruit may not/probably be anything like the orginal.
Someone threw a peach pit up on our patio bank in the forest trees. I don’t know when. This year we noticed it was about 4 foot high and had one large peach on it. We have 2 other trees down in the,yard. Last year they were wormy so this year we sprayed. We had a bourgeois harvest but they didn’t get very large so we will be pruning them back this fall and culling some of the new peaches next year. We just canned 36 quarts of peaches.
I really don’t have anything to add… but I thought it was amusing that the google ad on the right side of my screen is showing a picture of peach ice cream. 😉
Thanks for the info. I don’t know much about peaches but wanted to let you know that I found the post interesting.
That’s actually not a bad price. Lowest I found was 5 counties away at $9/26lb box. Luckily hubby can swing by there when he’s able to come home from work and fill up the car, but still. (he came home with 13 boxes for me and friends if that gives you any indication what I’m up to this week… 😉 )
I have done some research online on growing peaches from the pits and it is possible. You have to clean them well, let them dry, then carefully crack the outer shell to reveal the small seed inside. This can then be planted like any seed, but in the fall. It has to have a cold winter to grow. The sites suggested mulching over where you plant them and seedlings should pop up in the spring. They also said that within 2-3 years they should produce peaches (I am suspicious of that though). I have collected my seeds of the peaches I liked this season and am planning on doing it this fall. There are quite a few good website/blogs about this online. Yours looks yummy! 🙂
We went and picked peaches last year and really enjoyed them. My goats ate my trees this year, so we only had a few peaches..the ones they couldn’t reach…:)
I made peach butter in my slow cooker and made peach jelly from the peelings. Great way to make use of the WHOLE peach.
I am not sure about the pits….You wouldn’t be out anything by trying…