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."