Probably 70% of the time peaches that runt out are in excessively wet or dry soil. They tolerate either quite poorly compared to other species and a relatively short period of drought will stunt an establishing tree (much like blueberries). They also don’t compete against the competition of established large trees as well as just about anything else I grow. Compacted soil makes up quite a bit of the remaining %.
I’ve never, in all the sites I’ve managed, diagnosed a serious nutritional deficiency that destroyed tree vigor. Reasonably good soil with some extra nitrogen generally is all that is required during a peach tree’s establishment. A pH as high as 7.5 shouldn’t be an issue. 6.5-7 is generally considered optimum.
Too much water creates deficiency symptoms.
When the soil is too wet or too dry it is not mysterious. Just check the soil a week after last rainfall to see if it soppy or excessively dry. Of course long periods of drought can make trees suffer in any soil. I apologize if I’m merely stating the obvious in this post.
Thanks for the comments. Yeah… as i stated before i really don’t do any pruning on these 2 trees. Last year for example the remaining trees were all pruned to about 4.5-5 ft with these 2 in question just tipped. I was hoping that by tipping they would start to fill out.
By mid summer every tree grew well above my head and had to be taken down to 6ft, except these trees. These trees barely grew at all. They became very sparse looking too. Instead of a normal full tree look like the remaining trees these had quite a few bare spots with branches and zero leaves, or pale leaves, or leaves that were curled in from the edges.
I remember that at the beginning of last year i had a few leaves with spots, then quite a few yellowed, then they dropped and the tree stalled out. I’m not saying that everything is related though. It’s just the pattern i saw last year that appears to be coming back again. I’m beginning to seriously think it’s the area since these 2 in question are right next to each other at the bottom.
Four years ago I bought 3 trees on citation root stock. They had similar problems, curled leaves late, low vigor. One tree died Another tree I killed when the second year it stared out the same way, o.k. in the spring followed by curled leaves. I moved the tree in mid summer and put in pot. It of course died but I really didn’t care. The last tree I put in a pot in the fall and it has survived. but very low vigor.
At first I thought it was Potassium deficiency. See http://www.clemson.edu/extension/peach/faq/peach_nutrition.html. The third picture under Potassium Deficiency looked just like my tree. However, a tree right beside on of the trees on another root stock showed not problems, very vigorous. Since all the trees on citation root stock acted the same, I blamed the root stock. Maybe where you bought the trees mislabeled them, instead of lovell you have citation.
Citation on plum root stock does not act this way.
They are both from Grandpas orchard. Both are PF series peaches. I’m not even sure Grandpas sells Citation. They are what they label as peach root. I also have 2 more trees on the same root stock that are doing just fine.
All three of the peach trees on the citation root stock had very few roots. They really only had the roots that came bare rooted with small fibrous roots. They had about as many feeder roots as a 4 inch pot. The reason they showed the potassium was the lack of roots to take up the potassium. It could very well be totally unrelated, but I would check to see how many roots the tree has. I also had a tree die of wet soil and this looked totally different. One gentle tug and the whole tree came up…
I had a seedling come up beside one of the citation trees. It grew to over 6 feet over the summer while the citation tree grew about 8 inches and died at the end of summer. The soil was not the problem.
I’d have to agree with Alan’s comments. If the trees are not
excessively wet or dry, then I would look to Gary’s answer.
There is something going on with the root system. I’d check
for crown or collar rot, or possibly nematodes.
After this week I’ll check the soil. We are expecting storms every day. Funny thing is 2 trees no further than 3 feet are just fine and actually have way more vigor than I’d like.
For me the only time trees looked like that was borers so I was about to offer the same suggestion as Alan. I have never had decline on a peach for any other known reason. I am on a hill so there is no drainage problem.