In May of 2021 I planted a contender peach. And then a couple weeks later we had a terrible hail storm… I’m a novice growing peaches so in 2022 I didn’t do anything just let the little peach tree grow and it grew quite well. Except now soon I’m getting ready to prune it and I noticed that one of the branches, one of the main scaffolding branches has a lot of healed over hail hits. Should I prune that brach off? Thank you so much.
These look like black knot too me, but I am not sure if a peach can or can’t get black knot
Those are spots where the hail hit the peach tree. We get pretty serious hail around here and they look like like the hits have become oval and like lips
But thank you I’ll look up black spot and peaches
Those hail wounds look to be healing well. If your tree is vigorous, I imagine it will finish sealing this coming season. I would follow your original scaffold plan and just keep an eye on this branch to make sure it doesn’t develop canker infection.
Thank you so much. The tree does seem to be healthy. I will watch for disease
I agree with @solaris - it should be OK but could be a spot for infections so keep an eye on it.
I have a great many ugly branches like that in my orchard now due to the cicadas from the year before last. I try to prune a lot of it off but in some places it is a key part of the structure so I keep it.
Thank you so much for your advice. I feel better about the little tree now. So glad I found this group.
Can you take a pic of the whole tree?
I’d like to see how you shape it.
I am by no means an expert and I’m sure someone here could chime in and show a picture or explain how to do the open scaffolding. When I bought the little tree it had four main branches you could see that there were four main branches I watched something on YouTube and the gardener explained that the main scaffolding should go: one North, one south, one east, one west. So that the middle is open and those main scaffoldings will get big as the tree grows. Could someone else please explain this better or maybe open a new topic or the topic is available if we searched it…Thank you so much… I wish I had studied about the peach tree before I planted it.
It has been post several times on this forum re. Pruning peach trees to open center. What your described sound right.
One of the best videos on pruning peach this way is done by North Carolina State.
Just google Peach pruning, North Carolina State. There are several videos about pruning peaches from young to mature peach trees.
Thank you so much. I will have to look up those videos. And maybe hopefully in the summer wouldn’t it be wonderful to see some peaches on my peach tree
