I wouldnt discount the fact that things get too dry. I’m in central Ohio too, and its been pretty nasty dry here.
If you had trees close enough to cause walnut toxicity, then chances are you have others close by that suck up all the moisture.
I have a 4.5’ diameter pig hickory on the edge of my orchard that steals all the moisture it can. Along with walnuts, ash, and wild cherries. I’ve been removing a number of trees including 3- 24" wild cherry. I moved my natural tree boundary back 50’ in some cases.
I got one peach off of 16 trees this year. In the past my peaches would stay hard and not ripen. I’d start to water them and then they would eventually soften up and ripen. Weeks or a month after the local grower said their peaches were ready.
My trees are on 15x15’ centers and M7 rootstock. I have mostly apples. The surrounding trees, the soil type, and the density of trees just absolutely dry the place up by late July and August.
My apples have all been ok, they are pretty drought tolerant but a month ago my peaches looked moisture stressed and they were. I have irrigation that I installed this year, and got them looking nice. Soil was very moist two weeks ago. I checked yesterday and the soil is bone dry again and their leaves are hanging. Things just flat out use a lot of water.
I grew nursery trees for 42 years and always said the key was water. We eventually installed 600 acres of drip irrigation. Its amazing how much more growth and how healthy they can be with just ample water. It would take 2 years off of our 7 year growing to digging cycle.
All the soil amendments sometimes fix things but ample water is required for them to do it.
I thought your soil samples looked pretty good. Being in central Ohio we are sometimes in a rain shadow. I’m north of Columbus and we dont get the rain that Pickaway and Ross county gets 40 miles south.
I think you’d be surprised what the water will do for you and the health of your trees. My peaches look the best they ever have, hopefully I’ll get more than one next year.
You have a lot of people here from different areas in the world and their climates vary a lot. Crops are grown where they do best for a reason. Prior to irrigation you had regional areas where plants could thrive. SC and Georgia for peaches for example. Wheat in eastern Washington. Those crops can grow there without supplemental water.
Interesting. We had so much water throughout spring and summer, I was hoping for it to dry out as ripening started. We didn’t dry out until mid-August, literally multiple rains per week, but then it shut off. Maybe one or two tiny showers since then. The dry out came just before ripening, but maybe they were drier than I thought. I’ll have to keep an eye on this. No trees near the peaches, a few near the apples and more 20-30’ from the pears. The mounds might be more of a dry out factor than I realized.
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If you have any farmers nearby that use a subsoiler, you might inquire how deep they run. Typically about 24” to 30” deep is the depth that most farmers run to occasionally breakup their hardpans. What you are doing should work well since you have 30” of soil. Have you tried importing some Canadian crawlers? They burrow deep into the soil profile and help accelerate soil conditioning. I imported those and European crawlers and my results have been remarkable. Since you are pretty far north you may even have them as native, but if not they are worth obtaining!
How many years have your plants been in ground? I have one peach tree that has been 5 years before fruiting this year. It had about 15 fruits which I did not thin, eventually it shed all but 1 before ripening. Now the last one remains and is ripening on the tree. So I learned that maturity matters a lot, a peach tree can set many more fruits than it’s capable of maturing. Perhaps more time is your answer.
Best wishes
Dennis
The one’s that carried some fruit are 4 years planted. I’m sure time is also an issue. Just that those trees are 10-12’ tall, well pruned open and 4-5" trunk bases and I see plenty of trees at orchards and on here with same or smaller growth and plenty of fruit. But I have an uphill battle which may demand more maturity.
Whatever my Honeycrisp is (specific rootstock and genetics), I need to clone it. I got 50 great apples last year at 3 years old and around 100 this year at 4 years old. It’s in the first row of apples, 10’ from a peach tree. It’s my best tree overall and from what I hear, a complete enigma. Maybe I won’t get much from it next year, but that’s what I was afraid of this year and the harvest doubled. Thankful for anything I can grow and eat.
Surround does not imo affect ripening, I use it on peaches and apples and have not seen an affect. I do plan this spring to prune my peach trees back by about 1/3 of this years growth to limit fruit set and hopefully hasten ripening of what I don’t this out. So if I get 15 peaches set next spring, I will thin out to only 10 at least 8” apart to see if all remaining can ripen on the tree. On one young tree my Spice Z nectarine graft grew fruit only 2” in diameter and then all 3 fruits shrinked instead of ripening. 3 out of 3 fell off after drying up. So I think it’s related to more fruit set than the tree is ready to grow
Dennis
Hardpans are mostly a west coast thing. California has a lot. They used to dynamite them now it’s heavy rippers. There are very few areas east of the Mississippi with hard pans. The usual problem out East is high water tables and very slowly permeable soils.
Actually it’s prevalent throughout W Tn where I grew up; it can be anywhere if the drainage is poor and the right soil constituents are present especially in clay soils! So don’t write it off as just a West coat thing!
Here is an AI explanation that anyone with clay soils should read:
“Soil Hardpan: Challenges and Solutions for Farmers | AgNoteSoil forms a hardpan through a process called soil cementation, where minerals like calcium carbonate, silica, or iron oxides bind soil particles together. This process is often facilitated by soil compaction from heavy machinery, livestock, or repeated plowing, which presses particles together, and can be exacerbated by poor drainage and high levels of sodium, particularly in clayey soils. The resulting layer is dense, impermeable to water, and resistant to root penetration.
Natural Hardpan Formation
Mineral Deposition: Over long periods, water moving through the soil can dissolve and transport minerals like calcium carbonate, silica, iron, and aluminum. When these minerals precipitate, they act as a natural cement, binding the surrounding soil particles into a dense, hard layer.
Particle Migration: In some cases, the natural movement of water can cause the smallest soil particles (like clay) to migrate downward and accumulate in a specific horizon, creating a naturally dense layer.”
Dennis
For sure, if the tree is really loaded with fruit. Most years we don’t have to thin nearly 90%. But thinning is pretty huge when it comes to fruit size.
I think the problem with Faithful’s peach trees could potentially be the age of the trees, combined with on/off rainfall, and possibly juglone affecting production.
We had a few young trees which ripened early and the fruit was bad. This was due to the extreme rainfall followed by periods of high heat and dry. Hard to grow peaches in that kind of weather.
Faithful’s trees ripened later. I attribute that to the age of the trees. Young trees ripen later than older trees. Also the amount of fruit can affect ripening time. Heavy laden trees ripen later than trees with a light crop.