Bob,
What? You don’t like my Snow White tree? 
I like the term you use, a goblet shape!! Remind me of Harry Potter’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (sorry for my digression).
Yup, the problem is that 3 out of 4 scaffolds came out of the same spot.
Here is from another angle.
That’s a very pretty tree. I like the shape and the look. And it could easily be supported, even if just temporarily, by running a heavy rope around all the limbs just above those secondary branches. Bob could do the same to his. Tie things together for support.
Thank you, Fruitnut. That’s a great idea. I should have my “right hand man” does it some time before the end of the season. No rush. There is no nectarines on the tree this year.
I am jealous of Bob and @alan about their peaches and nectarine production this year. We have none in my area.
Paint the rope white. Or maybe something else pretty. Your tree deserves it.
The neck had started to wrinkle. It was great. The Satsuma and a Splash (19 brix) from the same tree were both good, but I liked the Castleton better.
edit: I should mention that I can’t claim credit for thinning any of the 3. They just set a reasonable amount of fruit on their own.
The 2nd tree I pictured is very lightly loaded. There were maybe 8 Arctic Glo 1-2 donut nectarines, and maybe 20 peaches from the original (unknown so far) tree. There are a few spots where there are 3 peaches in a foot’s space, but when there are so few on the tree I think it’s OK to violate the 10" rule…
While my trees get a mix of old telephone wire and coaxial cable. And if they are special, they sometimes get an old cord from a discarded electrical device.
Sending her my best to rebound soon . I did lymes it sucks.
The same storm took out half of my 16 year old Nectarine tree. I did not shed a single tear.
This is a mis-labeled peach tree I bought from Lowe’s. Of course, I could not tell that I received a wrong tree. Then each year, the little fruits got taken care by the fruit moth. I do not like to spray tree. So it has been my landscape tree.
I was going to cut it down since it takes my prime real estate. Now it is the time.
Below shows some dissections of crotches (from woodworking perspective) that illustrate what is strong vs weak wood.
I was talking to one of the vendors at the farmer’s market today and asked him if he ever has peach trees break. He said it’s a common occurrence. I asked if they just cut off the broken part and he said:
“No, we just ratchet it back together, then put a piece of 2x4 on each side and drive a bolts through the middle.”
He said that years later those trees are still producing, even with the bolts and 2x4 still in place. I’ll keep that approach in mind, but I think it might be easier to execute when you have more than one person affecting the repair.
Here’s an updated pic of the Gloria peach. It’s still holding together and the fruit should be ripe soon.
I picked a couple as a test which are sitting on the counter, but I think it needs at least another week.
Your peaches look clean (free of bugs and rot). I am impressed.
In our region it has been an exceptionally low pest pressure year except for rots encouraged by serious pit splitting. I’ve seen pretty clean peaches on trees not sprayed at all. All this while only deer are at normal rates of pressure. I haven’t had to kill a single raccoon or squirrel this year, they are non-existent on my property for the first time in the 30 plus years I’ve lived here. On other sites with low populations of squirrels compared to the norm, they seem to be focused on pine nuts and have not been a problem with fruit. They are most destructive towards green peaches and sometimes other species of fruit but now their numbers are too small to represent much of a threat because even if they start to eat riper fruit it shouldn’t have much affect on the harvest.
What is sad is that so many lost their stone fruit crops north of Westchester county and will not benefit from this year of potential bounty. I was a lucky one with big yields from most of my stone fruit but the spit pits have been terrible. At least the plums have sound pits.
It’s always something.
Agree that this year, insects like PC and OFM’s pressure was less but rot is prevalent (even with 3-4 fungicide spray) due to high humidity and moisture. My apples and pear trees are covered with soot blotch and fly specks.
Right now, there are so many yellow jackets circling my pears. I need to find a way to get rid of them.
For the most part, in MA, peaches were wiped out this year.
I’m also in the honeymoon period for this property. From what I’ve heard (and seen with my own house) the first few years at a property are much easier and get harder as things build up. I’ve been spraying to try to keep it that way. Maybe 6 times this spring, though at least half are fungicide only.
Some of the rentals seem easier from an animal perspective as well, being closer to town (no deer and less of most others). Though at one of the areas (with 2 rentals), there seems to be as much or more animal pressure. I lost all the nectarines and apricots at one site and the dounut nectarines at the other. There are still some peaches at the 1st site, as they are a late Sept/Oct variety (September Snow), but I don’t know if I’ll get any (even with a decent load).
The site where the peach cracked seems to have less animal pressure- nothing touched any of the apricots, even most of those which fell on the ground.
I think Alan has suggested starting early with traps. I haven’t done it, but probably should. The more we can knock down the population, the fewer there will be on the jujubes in September/October.
I sampled one of the peaches. Very hard and 12-13 brix. It’s low acid, so it needs another 3-5 points. I
It’s also another bad year for Marsonnina.
As far as wasps go I have over the years consistently gotten control with traps, but it takes some time and a lot of traps as well as diligent trap tending. Citric acid helps keep the apple juice attractive for quite a bit longer- a dash of detergent makes cleaning easier. They are eventually repelled by either vinegar or the smell of rotting wasps. I’m sure it’s a potent fertilizer.
Low acid fruit is much more attractive to wasps, I believe. Squirrels as well. But I won’t steal it unless the brix is over about 19- and only nects get there and beyond IME. Not a fan of Gloria.
i sprayed my sour cherries 3xs and i still got rot in them just before harvest. thank fully i still got 3/4 harvested. this rain just wont quit. another 3/4in forcasted today.
I’m very late to this thread (long hours this time of year). But the thread is interesting to me.
We never repair breaks anymore. Older trees break parts of scaffolds off regularly. I’d say we probably notice a large peach branch on the ground once a week during this time of year (older peach tree have brittle branches which break easy). We would never consider trying to repair a break, no matter the age of the tree. We just saw off the breaks and go on. Sometimes if there is lots of bark attached to the break, we will let the tree ripen the peaches on the broken branch. But most of the time those peaches are sub par quality anyway. There isn’t generally enough bark to feed the peaches to ripen properly. They will go ahead an ripen if there is some bark attached, but most of the time they aren’t as good as normal.
That said, maybe the peaches would be better quality if the branch was raised back up, as you have done, so that the bark at the break isn’t kinked and laid over as is the case for an un-repaired/unraised broken branch.
I know, commercially speaking, an individual peach tree isn’t nearly as valuable as perhaps it is in a back yard. But new ones do grow very fast, when cared for.
Peach trees put on so much new wood, when I see a broken down branch from peach trees, I’m much more concerned at the loss of the peaches on the branch (like I say most of the time those peaches aren’t marketable if allowed to ripen) than the loss of part of the tree. Peaches put on what I call tons of “disposable wood” during the growing season. The trees fill in any void areas. Even if the tree happens to break like yours did, I probably would have sawed it off just above the break, so that it still had three scaffolds, without giving much thought to the loss of the top half of the tree.
We lose more fruit and time to a plethora of other issues, so we put little time in trying to prevent or repair breaks.
That said, I bet your tape job helps keep that tree together for a few years. Maybe cables or chains would keep it together for a long long time. But if time/labor is a consideration, sawing stuff off makes more sense. You saw off above the break and watch the tree fill out all it’s empty spaces pretty quickly.
A not-insignificant consideration is the grafts. I actually knocked it out of the park this spring and had almost all my nectarine grafts growing well. Some of them on this tree have 2-3 ’ of growth and I’d hate to lose that by cutting it off and starting over with a new graft next spring.
This year I’m getting a lot of peaches from some of my other trees, so I suppose it wasn’t critical for me to get these. But, it is the first year it is producing and I was looking forward to trying them.
But today’s experience picking really showed me that when I get a heavy set on a tree it is probably more peaches than I can easily handle. I had my parents over and went picking in the backyard with my dad. We got ~140 lbs of apples and peaches, including 65 pounds from just 1 tree (Loring, though the size per peach wasn’t as big as in the past…looks like I didn’t thin as well as I thought). And there is still more fruit on all the trees.
Even splitting the fruit with my parent, brother & his wife, and my mother-in-law, there is still a ton. I’m left thinking about jam (maybe some peach & Aronia?).
@BobVance,
I cannot wait to post such photos myself. Congratulations on your bounty. That should last you until the jujubees come in. Nice harvest and an inspiration to us all. 
Great going Bob!!!
Wow Bob!
