I have Citrus Gain on order based off of nutrient content and testimonies on other sites. We will see. I could see a lack of N due to wash out.
I’ll pay back to this if it does help.
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Yeah, this is just the beginning. For the past 3 years i have had this, followed by a HUGE lack of growth, to leaves that are long, thin, pale, and veiny. I hardly prune these trees and they haven’t grown past 6 ft. The foliage gets sparse, and the 2 get pretty sick looking.
Each year they always start of fine though.
That does sound like it could be excess water issues.
I don’t know if you’ve heard my stories, but I could probably fill up a small dump truck with peach trees I lost due to too much water on their roots.
When I started my backyard orchard, I originally planted all my trees on the flat ground. The ground would get water logged and kill the trees. The ones which didn’t die never really grew much and floundered.
Eventually I put a field tile all the way around my backyard orchard (buried about 4’) and drained the subsurface water away. That helped considerably, but the trees really didn’t thrive till I started replacing them by putting them into mounds. Once I started doing that, they started really taking off.
When I planted my orchard at the farm, I didn’t even consider planting peach trees without some sort of raised planting. I pushed up terraces with a road grader before I ever planted my first peach trees there, then planted the trees on the tops of the terraces.
Peach trees hate water sitting on their roots. If there is good drainage (like a raised planting, or sandy soil) they will grow like weeds with lots of water, although they don’t need a lot of water.
In the Midwest most of the soil doesn’t drain good enough to really make peaches thrive, unless they are in a raised planting, or on a natural rise which never gets water logged.
You can check your drainage. Wait till you’ve had several days (or weeks) of very wet weather, when soils are really saturated. Then right after a good rain, dig down beside your peach tree. If you dig down to the root zone and there is water in the hole, or after a rain if water stays in the hole for more than an hour, that’s not good drainage. The longer the water stays in the hole, the worse it is for peach roots.
Sometimes peaches will tolerate a little poor drainage, then one year there will be a very long stretch of rainy weather. It’s during those long rainy stretches that it kills peach trees or sets them back significantly, so check your drainage at the most rainy/soggy times. That will be what your peach trees have to live through.
I’ve seen this so commonly around here. People will plant peach trees in their yard and in a few drier years they do OK. Then after a couple wet years they are hardly growing at all, or dead. I’ve talked to people who have just resigned that peach trees only live a few years around here, which isn’t true. Sometimes borers get them, but most of the time the soil is too wet.
What rootstock are these peaches on?
Lovell
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I don’t have experience with it.
I really wonder how much more water these trees could be holding. In the area they are sitting the back retaining wall had to be built up 3.5ft above the surrounding grade to level it to the front.
If anything i would assume the area in the front which is only about 12 inches above grade would have the issue. When i went to plant the trees the ones in question were planted in nothing but the mixture of compost/manure and top soil. The trees in front however were planted in mostly native clay. I only had to lay down 5-8 inches of compost/manure and top soil. So when i was digging i hit pure clay pretty quick.
Sean,
Is it possible the retaining walls could be holding in too much water? It sounds like the dirt in them is pretty good quality, but if the dirt below the retaining walls didn’t drain well, could the retaining walls themselves hold enough water to make it soggy inside the planters?
Sounds like you are using pretty much native dirt, so if it’s not drainage, I’m not sure what it would be in this case.
I’m wondering about the concrete block. I would think that it would allow for great drainage. Under the block i have a good 6-8 inches of crushed gravel. In the end I seriously wonder if because of the height that the nutrients just get washed away. When i built these structures i didn’t do much of disturbing the underlying soil. Here is a rough drawing of approx. what I’m talking about:
Pretty much the brown is the existing grade. The red is the crushed gravel base, blue the planter walls/limits, black the fill, and green the trees.
As you can tell from this:
The trees in question are 100% in the compost/manure and top soil. Every other tree extends down into the existing earth. That consists of about 1-1.5 inches of dirt, 12-24 inches of brown clay and then a good 2-3 inches of pure grey clay. The description above is exactly why i built these structures. Every hole turned into a bowl. I was thinking of i left the existing earth undisturbed it would allow the water to run off by just following the slope.
That certainly looks well planned out. It may not be a water retention issue. I really don’t know how well the water would go up and around the retaining walls through crushed gravel. It may flow freely, but I think I’d check it for the heck of it since it’s an easy to dig a hole and observe if it ever holds water.
I know on the tile I put in my backyard orchard worked really good for the first few years when the trench soil was loose, but now it doesn’t drain water away nearly as good as it did. We put the tile in on a solid bed of gravel and used a laser level to get the slope right. We also used tile with a sock, so I don’t think there are tree roots in it (plus when I put a garden hose and turn it on in the clean out, water flows through it).
Still it doesn’t drain the soil near as well, I think because the soil is more packed in the original trench and the gravel spaces have all filled in with dirt.
Drawings were very helpful.
Thanks for the insight Olpea, if it ever stops raining now…
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If the trees are around concrete which is full of lime, the soil must be very basic.
Interesting thought… so… Maybe i do a quick PH test in that area. The soil could very well be preventing nutrient uptake.
Have you done a soil test? I tend to be of the mind that designing for drainage is roughly equivalent to designing for flushing salts.
Do you fertilize as if they are in large containers?
Yes it happens every yr because it’s entirely normal in peach and nectarine. They drop small yellow leaves way before it seems appropriate. I don’t see any nutrient issues in the pictured trees. The vigor and leaf color looks good. Quit worrying about it your trees are fine. There is a minor leaf spotting issue, nothing else going wrong.
Fruitnut,
I wish i had the pictures saved from last year. The tree put out about 3-6 inches of growth then stopped. The leaves got very pale and had dark veins. They also started to curl up at the edges. Some of the branches had that lion tale look to them with a cluster of leaves at the top and sparse growth down the branch.
I hope it doesn’t happen again this year, but if it does i will be sure to document it.
Edit, i found some from early in the season last year. These were when the problem started up again.
<img src="/uploads/default/original/2X/0/00f23e242e2fda39d4723910b265b45bed181cb7.jpg" width=“562” height=“1000”
I did a soil test after the first year. PH came back around 6.8-7. Really depended on where i took the test.
I have been fertilizing like they were in ground.
Those look to have a bit of iron deficiency. That is high pH and too wet. There are plenty of green leaves. That degree of iron deficiency won’t hurt yield or quality. It can get much worse to the extent of white leaves.
Some chelated iron would help and lower pH too, which is not bad. I have heard that chelated is really the best to use for quick action.
Well you have some stuff to try anyway! Keep us updated. We all learn from this stuff.
Fruitnut,
Sean had mentioned he had a serious vigor problem, “For the past 3 years i have had this, followed by a HUGE lack of growth”
This concerned me because in my area this generally indicates weak trees, if they are planted in normal soil with normal precipitation.
If it’s not something severely out of balance with the soil, or a drainage issue, I’ve got no clue what it is.