One of my peach tree is 10 years old. 10 years of open center training/pruning practice really made this tree “open center” with scaffolds move more and more away from the center, and more and more leaves move to top branch. Sun penetration is not a problem but the tree is less vigorous and has more branches dieback . I think it’s a time to renew/cutback half the scaffolds to rejuvenate the tree’s growth. The scaffolds I plan to cut off are 2 of 4 major scaffolds about 6 inch diameter.
I would like opinion/suggestions/comment on pros and cons of my options below
leave a not very ideal ( angel,position on the curtent scaffold etc. ) branch on and train this branch to be a future scaffold.
can I side graft/bud graft scions (or any graft methods that work ) on side of scaffolds to grow a new branch to be future scaffolds? I have not done graft ditectly on major scaffords, and not sure if the graft will be successful.
top work the two scaffolds. Will the top work scions grow well enough to become future scaffolds because of unbalanced grow? My concern is the remaining two scaffolds (one has plum grafted and other has apricot grafted that I don’t plan to alter ) might get the most of the nutrient from the tree and there is not enough nutrient left to feed the top worked scions .
I don’t mind lost a year or two of fruits production, but I want a less spread and more vigorous tree.
Annie,
My peach tree was 10 years old this year when I removed it last month. It was in decline after borer attacks 3-4 years ago and broken limbs two years in a row.
Mine was also open-center with 3 main scaffolds that went down to two when one lost a battle to canker. One of the remaining two had severe bark split, a deep, ugly wound (probably caused by canker, too).
People say peach trees at 15 years old are old in harsh climate like yours and mine. Mine could have lasted 15 years. Seeing that it produced fewer and fewer new red shoots and fewer leaves even after loads of urea, I don’t think it is worth saving. It also produced poorer fruit quality esp. this season.
Peach loves nitrogen fertilizer. Peach growth can be stimulated by nitrogen fertilizer in the spring. You could try that. I am not sure how much growth stimulation you will get by removing its scaffolds. When I removed large limbs of my old peach tree, I did not notice new growths from those cuts.
I also have had no success grafting peach on wood that are 3 years or older. To me, peach grafting does not work like apples or pears, plums or even cherries.
You said you don’t mind waiting a year or two for fruit after pruning/top working to your tree which may or may not work. I say, why not plant a new tree? You could get fruit in the 2nd year from a healthy, vigorously growing new tree.
Let’s invite Mark @Olpea. He definittely will be able to give you very good advice.
Actually Tippy wrote almost word for word what I would have written.
I’ll just add some peach varieties are prone to produce more blind wood than others which throw out more renewal wood. The ones which are prone to leave blind wood, I leave more 4" stubs on the scaffolds to prevent large sections of blind wood.
This is one of the more harder peach pruning techniques to train a new person on. They have to pay attention to how the tree is doing. If they see the tree starting to develop blind wood, then they need to leave lots of stubs (i.e. hat racks). If the tree produces lots of renewal wood, then a lot of thinning cuts can be made.
In terms of where you’re at now. I agree with Tippy that cutting 6" scaffolds probably isn’t going to get you any renewal wood (though it can happen). To keep the my peach trees contained, I simply dehorn (i.e. cut then back from the edges severely) in a bad year. The biggest wood I cut is generally something like 2", unless a scaffold is broken.
I’d maybe cut the tree back from the edges, but I wouldn’t remove scaffolds from a 10 year old peach tree. It’s only got a few years of good production left. About 12 years is all we can get out of a peach tree before it starts declining in production and makes better economic sense to replace it.
You are right, this is my concern too. I am eager to hear how members on this forum deal with declining old peach tree besides cut it down.
This tree is healthy in general, not much cankers, never had peach borer issue (there is another peach tree 10 ’ away and has never had borers issue neither. I thought the mint I grow around the base of these two trees helped). I have peach borers on other peach trees and plum trees but not on this one. This tree has other two large scaffolds that I grafted for apricot and plum. Both plum and apricot on these scaffolds are healthy. Especially the plum, grows very well. Although I need to heavily prune the plum to balance the nutrient of the tree this coming spring.
A Nectarine of mine is getting about that age.There are a number of Plums and Apricots grafted.I’m wondering if their progress will be slowed or shortened.
The PF 24 peach tree I removed had my beloved Saturn peach graft on it.
My Easternglo nectarine that I also removed at the same time had 7 apricot varieties (several I like) and 10 peach+nectarine varieties on it.
I feel bad losing those hard earned grafts but not bad enough to keep the tree.
Back many years ago, I followed your advice and trained several of my peach trees open center. This is one of them. I am very happy I did what you’ve taught me (and thank you!). This tree is kept relatively short. I can pick up most of my peaches standing on the ground(when it is loaded with fruits,the branches real came down ), easy to spray, and easy to prune. No ladder is needed. Branches angels are wide enough to withstand fruits load without break any limbs.
But I see the unbalanced grow between the plum and peach with the plum grows way more vigorous than the peach does. My goals are to reduce the size of the tree , and balance the growth , hopefully by cutting the peach scaffold back,( it takes up too wide space ) and using saved plant energy in the root system to push out stronger buds in the spring that I can select as a new scaffold.
However there is a possibility that after I cut the scaffold short, but no new buds push out of the retained scaffold. If this is the case, will top graft method work?
As far as I understand it, you want to keep the plum and apricot scaffolds, but invigorate the remaining peach scaffolds?
If I am understanding you correctly, you probably don’t want to remove the tree because you have spent some time constructing this multi variety tree and you don’t want to lose it?
So you are looking for anything you can do to bring the tree back in balance, and bring it in so the diameter of the tree is not so large?
If that is correct, then know that apricot on peach root is very vigorous, actually more vigorous than apricot on apricot root. Peach roots have the opposite of dwarfing effect for apricots. Also if your plum graft on this tree is a Japanese plum, or J. plum hybrid, those can be very vigorous too. I mention this because it can be a hard fight to keep the tree in balance. I would certainly expect the tree to come out of balance and the peach to fall behind, especially if the peach cultivar is a less vigorous cultivar.
Probably the best thing to do is to try to keep the apricot and plum cut back and let the peach scaffolds grow more, but obviously that won’t reduce the diameter of the apricot and plum scaffolds.
Also scaffold placement on the trunk can make a difference on which scaffolds get the most nutrients. Honestly, it’s probably too late to do much now, but if you wanted to post some pics, you might get some more ideas from members on the forum.
One thing you might have been able to try is to notch below the most vigorous scaffolds to try to slow them down, then maybe keep the notch wounds painted with a fungicide or copper to prevent canker. You might have to notch several times.
Yes, these are what I try to do. The plum grafted on the peach grow too well, robbed most of the nutrients from the peach. I am too late to realize this problem. I definitely will give the plum a heavy prune in the spring. Frankly, I don’t mind to turn remaining peach scaffolds into plum or apricot if I can successfully topwork the peach scaffolds. I should have selected and planned ahead of renewal scaffods few years back.
I will give notch method a try. Thank you for sharing your experiences and advice.I am glad I have your expertise guide me growing manageble backyard peaches (I still remember your photo of a chair in front of your peach tree to demonstrate the size of that tree. Most of my fruit trees I kept on short size, 6~8’ )
Annie,
First, I totally agree with you that we are fortunate to have Mark as our peach guru.
Secondly, I, too, realized it too late that apricots on peach grew like mad. I had Tomcot and Orangered grew 7-8’ , throwing my poor peach tree off balance. I don’t have that problem anymore
I agree with the article jaypeedee posted by Bill Shane. What I call hat rack are really stub cuts or “hangers”. We use them only on low vigor peach trees which have problems producing new renewal wood.
If the scaffolds are slow growing, we try to do more stub cuts and less thinning/heading cuts.
@Olpea What does “declining in production” look like?
I have a 13 year old peach tree. The last two years, it has had good fruit set and I hand thin it like I always have, but about half the peaches get to a normal size with good flavor and about half are 2/3 size with bad flavor (not just bland, but sour/bitter/smoky). They are intermixed within one another on different branches, i.e. no pattern.
One guess is that the leaf canopy does look more spindly than other trees I have and there’s not enough leaf surface area to fully develop all the fruit.
I’m debating taking it out to get a fresh tree growing, but if I overthinned it, do you think that would help the remaining fruit? Cut it back to 2-3" scaffolds?
Yard space is at a premium so assessing 25-50 good peaches on this existing tree for another few years vs. nothing for 2+ year until a new one ramps up.
Older peach trees will have less vigor, to the point many times they won’t grow good quality shoots. A perfect shoot is about 18" long, 45 degree, or less, angle to horizontal, with no branching on the shoot.
Older peach trees want to produce more unproductive short shoots (8" or less long) especially if they have been cropped hard the previous year. Nitrogen fertilization can help mitigate this issue.
The biggest issue with old peach trees is the bigger branches and scaffolds seem to sort of rot on the inside. They don’t completely decay on the inside, but the heartwood gets softer and more spongy. Then the branch/scaffold loses it’s structural integrity and breaks. Slowly the peach tree will go from a big beautiful spreading canopy to dropping scaffolds so that it gets smaller and smaller. It will still produce good peaches, if fertilized, but the size of the canopy diminishes. Finally the canopy gets to the size of a large juvenile peach tree without any real ability to generate new scaffolds.
This is somewhat variety dependent. That is some varieties last longer than others. And I’d expect it to be climate dependent, with peach trees in moderate Mediterranean dry type climates to last longer than trees where there are legitimate winters and tons of rain.
Thanks - that’s really helpful. I will assess it a little closer.
I have a tree on order that I want to slot into that spot but maybe I can temporarily plant it somewhere else and give the peach another season with fertilizer to see how it reacts.
