Mature peach tree pruning

General Fruit Growing
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After reviewing many videos and guides, I remain confused about pruning mature peach trees (and presumably nectarine trees).

I have reviewed a video from a fellow from NC State that has been cited on this forum as a helpful guide. He seems to suggest that all branches facing down, straight up, or towards the open center should be pruned. Thus, only laterals on scaffolds remain and produce fruit.

I have also reviewed instructions from Virginia Tech (I live in Virginia). That guidance suggests that one prune to create a “donut” effect. And the donut is about 5 feet in diameter, leaving a 5 foot open center. This implies that branches facing the center should be retained, so long as the 5 foot open center is retained.

Are these really two different pruning methods? If so, can anyone comment on the advantages or disadvantages of one over the over?

I must confess a continuing frustration when seeking guidance on the internet. So much information seems inconsistent, even when coming from sources one would consider reliable, such as university ag schools. But maybe it is more consistent than I realize, due to my own inexperience and ignorance.

Any help would be welcome.

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No mention of donuts.

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This is how i do my stone fruits, but im just a hobbyist and it seems the simplest and easiest for me.

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That’s a good graphic.

Question, pruning guides I’ve read, like that PennState guide, warning that heading cuts like in that graphic promote branching and to avoid it after the first year. But, don’t you need to prune as per that graphic to cause the 1 year old wood to regenerate? That’s where the fruit buds form!

I’ve never understand this - to me that graphic looks right.

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Yes, these videos helped me to clarify some of my questions
Dennis
Kent, Wa

Pruning a Young Peach Tree

Pruning a Two-Year Old Peach Tree

Pruning a Mature Peach Tree

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This very topic came up in a PM a couple days ago in a PM to me. I finally had some time to answer him.

In honor of protecting his privacy of a PM, I won’t divulge his identity, but these are some of our exchanges. I’m posting this because I think this may be instructive.

He wrote:

"Mark, I hope you had a good peach crop this year! This was my first good year with a small peach crop, plenty of asian pears, and enough apple for plenty of apple sauce.
I wanted to get your input on planting and the structure of peach trees? I usually buy peach tree from Adams County Nursery. The trees are around 4 feet tall and the top of tree have narrow crotch angles with the branches. (not good) I cut the trees of about thigh high and if they sprout out , I usually get good structure trees with low branching - I am sending you pictures.
The problem with this method is that I usually lose about 15 percent of the trees. Some don’t sprout out and die? I have never lost a apple, pear or plum tree cutting them back - just peach trees. I hope you understand the question?
Thanks @#$%"

My reply:

"Hi #$%&$,

Good to hear from you.

I understand your question. And it’s not something unique. Because of the problem you describe, I always try to order the smallest peach trees the nursery offers, generally 5/16" caliper (I buy patent protected trees, I graft non-patented trees generally). The smaller trees generally don’t have the problem you mention. They generally have live fruit buds all the way up and down their small trunk.

Most of those buds will sprout on the trunks eventually allowing for lots of choices for scaffold selection.

Sometimes I receive larger trunk peach trees from nurseries because that’s all they have. Those are generally from northern nurseries (like Adams County) because they are fall budded. Most of the time, those don’t have any live buds on the trunk. They are frequently two year old trees the nursery didn’t sell the previous season.

As you’ve experienced, if you behead those trees, they may die. That’s because if there are no live buds on the trunk, and you behead the top, the tree has to form an adventitious bud before anything can sprout. It’s much harder for peaches to form adventitious buds, than for other trees like apples, plums, etc.

So we never behead a peach tree to a point where there are no live buds below the cut.

Sometimes on those large trees, there will be some live buds at the base of the trunk (above the graft union). If that’s the case, we will go ahead and behead the tree at planting. The live buds at the base of the trunk will sprout and we use that to grow a new trunk, from which we can then choose scaffolds.

If there are no live buds at all on the trunk, when we receive large peach trees, then we don’t behead them at planting.

Instead we cut the top feathers back, even if the feathers are up too high. We let those feathers sprout and grow. If the tree is fertilized and growing fast, it will take in energy from the top growth, then will have time to form adventitious buds on the trunk, from which we can then choose lower scaffolds. But the key is the tree has to be in good well drained soil and good fertility. Also keep pruning back the top, if it gets too much growth there.

The tips of the branches send an hormone to suppress lower growth, which inhibits bud growth. Also the trunk needs to receive sunlight if you want the trunk to form adventitious buds. So a shaded trunk won’t form many adventitious buds. Don’t over prune the top, but just check the top about once a month and prune a little. In that way, you should get adventitious buds to form on the trunk.

Occasionally adventitious buds will still not form on the trunk using the technique outlined above. In that case, the only thing you can do is to simply start the scaffolds higher up on the trunk than you would like. You can still form a good tree with scaffolds which start higher on the trunk, and keep the tree pedestrian height.

You can also spread the tops of the trees with hinge cuts if you want to spread branches which have narrow crotch angles.

Another thing which might help you is to cut growth back that is vertical. You don’t have to cut it back completely, but you can cut it back and leave a stub. The stub will sprout new buds and then you can choose branches on that stub which have a more horizontal orientation.

Here’s a video of me pruning about 3 years ago.

Notice in the video, all the stub cuts I left. anything heading straight up I cut above something growing more horizontal.

On pics of your trees, I can tell you’ve done the opposite in some cases. You’ve cut the lower stuff which is more horizontal, and left the stuff growing straight up. That makes it really hard to keep a tree pedestrian height.

I suspect you are afraid to cut the larger growth (which is growing straight up) and instead you are cutting the smaller growth (which is growing more horizontal). You need to reverse your thinking.

Cut the more vigorous larger stuff (which is growing vertical) and leave the weaker growth (which is growing more horizontal). When you leave the weaker horizontal growth, after cutting the larger vertical growth, the weak horizontal growth becomes more vigorous because all the energy is now going to that weak horizontal growth.

The new weak horizontal growth will become much more vigorous and start to turn upwards and grow more vertically. Then you have to cut that vertical growth back again to weaker horizontal growth. As you keep doing that, you will develop low growing trees which are easy to pick, thin and prune from the ground."

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Olpea,

I would appreciate your thoughts on a discussion of “Pruning to obtain an open center tree” from the article found at the hyperlink below. This is a 2020 publication from the Virginia Tech Extension Office directed to pruning peach trees.

This discussion says that young fruit trees need to pruned “to develop and maintain fruiting wood near the tree center.” It goes on to say that “a mature peach tree trained to an open center form actually consists of a doughnut-shaped canopy about 5 or 6 feet in depth and 5 or 6 feet from the inner wall to the outer wall of the canopy.” This makes some sense to me because there is always good fruiting wood reaching toward the center of the tree.

But I have been diligently pruning it off based on my understanding of other pruning guides and tutorials that advise removing all branches growing toward the tree center. Maybe I am misreading this article or have misunderstood the other pruning guides and tutorials. Can you help me reconcile this guidance? Should some branches growing toward the center of the tree be saved?

Thanks. Tom J

(Pruning Peach Trees | VCE Publications | Virginia Tech)

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Tom,

I’m sorry for such a late reply, but I just now saw your last post (and question to me) on this thread.

I have read the Virginia Tech guide before, but scanned it again to re-familiarize myself with the document.

Overall it’s a good guide.

As to your specific question, I can see where it seems confusing. Do you maintain fruiting wood in the center, or do you make a “donut shaped” tree with a hole in the center?

The answer is that if you are trying to prune to a typical vase shape traditionally used in most peach orchards, you want to avoid waterspouts or central leaders in the center of the tree (where they love to grow) removing them with thinning cuts.

But you want to try to avoid the center being completely void of any shoots. It’s easy (and bad) to prune the peach tree so that there are large voids in the center of the tree, so that as the tree grows there is lots of blind wood on the scaffolds in the center of the tree. This reduces yield and can allow for sunburn on the scaffolds.

Generally sunlight will encourage some adventitious buds, even on peach trees, but in my locale, where the sun gets really hot on hot days, a scaffold with to much sun exposure can kill the bark.

So you want to leave some wood in the center of the peach trees, but keep it pruned lower in the center than the periphery of the tree, so that the center doesn’t grow tall and shade the outer portions of the tree.

There is a reason for calling the traditional way to prune peaches a “vase” or “bowl” shape. That’s because that’s really the shape you are shooting for. It doesn’t mean there are no productive shoots in the center of the tree, just that the center of the tree is the lowest part of the tree (completely opposite of a central leader training system for apples, btw).

Though the Virginia Tech article is a good one, there are a few things I might take exception to.

They talk about dormant pruning peaches. We don’t do that anymore because of the risk to winterkill they mention in the article. But in Virginia, the winters are much milder than here, so their advice is probably fine for VA.

Here we have to prune peaches strictly in the growing season, and ideally be done by August. The article is very correct that we don’t get much flower bud formation in the latter half of the summer.

It’s a small and nuanced thing, but terminal buds don’t always produce leaf buds. In a strict sense, I think the authors are correct, but many times are a small cluster of buds at the terminal end of the shoot. Frequently in that cluster is a flower bud. We generally thin that peach off anyway because it develops into a small fruit.

Re: bench cut

The article mentions bench cuts. We use those all the time, but one thing the article doesn’t mention is that it’s best not to cut just above the horizontal shoot for larger two year old wood. That’s because cutting just above the horizontal shoot will frequently cause the horizontal shoot to split and break right where the cut was made. It’s best to leave a little “nub” above the horizontal shoot (about a 3/4" nub). This prevents the horizontal shoot splitting at the cut. The nub will die and can be cut off the next year, if desired. We generally don’t ever cut the nub off because of labor involved, but ideally the nub would be removed the following year.

They also say in the article not to keep horizontal shoots. I flat disagree with that advice. There is no need to remove horizontal shoots, or shoots bending slightly below horizontal.

Those shoots can be utilized by heading them back by about a third. Then some of the new growth on the shoot will start to head slightly upward in the ideal direction you want it.

Also we don’t always completely remove waterspouts. On older trees, if there are portions of the scaffolds with blind wood (or nearly blind wood) we head back water spouts to what we call a “hat rack”. Those will produce some more horizontal growing shoots we can keep to reintroduce wood in the blind spots on the scaffold.

Basically, peaches are so versatile, one can take a shoot heading toward the ground and prune it so that new shoots start to head up, and vise versa. Shoots heading straight up can be headed to allow and select for shoots growing more horizontal.

Just yesterday I removed part of a scaffold which did a complete 180 degree turn toward the end. It didn’t naturally grow that way, just that the shoots selected when the tree was younger slowly turned the scaffold 180.

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Olpea,

Thank you for your excellent explanation. I’ve read many tutorials on peach tree pruning, and your explanation is the first on this topic that makes sense. I’ve been cutting out everything in the center, so I now have a lot of blind wood on the scaffolds. Instinctively, it didn’t make sense to prune out what appeared to be very productive wood. But I thought I was following the guidance I had read from the tutorials. Your explanation jives with my instincts, and I will now modify my pruning strategy and hopefully I can remedy my past mistakes.

Thanks again. I really appreciate you taking the time to answer my question.

Tom J.

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