My first 2019 tree order-

Looks like Univ. Ken. maybe the only one saying that Guardian is not cold hardy - all the other sites that I checked lump Lovell and Guardian into the same category as moderately cold hardy.

I could tell you were pretty committed to not getting any more trees, but I was joking with you because it sounded like you were a little tempted upon seeing those Vaughn prices! ha. But yea, I completely understanding having too many trees. I had forgotten you had 17 apples!!! People always ask me this question and I’m going to ask you: What are you going to with all that fruit?

Yeah, that is interesting. I don’t know specifically why Guardian isn’t rec’ed by UK, it might not have anything to do with hardiness, so I’m not sure. I think you’ll be OK with that rootstock in your climate, which is a bit different, along with more clay-ey soil than ours.

Stanford KY is the same zone as me, so it’s probably fine. I’m going to a grafting class in a few weeks at a UK extension office, so maybe I can ask them about this and Citation.

Like I said, I planted a pluot on Citation, which supposedly isn’t rec’ed either. It seems to have put on good growth its first year. It had to endure a 0 degree morning a couple weeks ago, so we’ll see how it does in the spring.

Yeah, I know, no worries. But like I said, maybe it could be a cheap source for my BIL, they live a half mile from us, and says he wants to plant some apple trees.

I have been doing all this planting while I have been off work (sorta retired), but am planning on getting back to work soon. So, that’s a big reason why I have to put the brakes on. I’ll have only so much time to tend to the trees, berry plants, veggje garden and mowing when things are greened out. My wife can do lawn work, but she lets me deal with the fruit plants, as it was really my idea to get them.

Only after doing all this maintenance work on them have I realized that my initial enthusiasm wasn’t tempered by this reality. I don’t regret getting the trees and plants as that was something I wanted to do when we got here, to have our own fruit. Plus, as a lot of folks have said, home grown is so much better than store bought.

Good question. And actually, if my 3 bench grafts survive, I’ll have 20 trees. Doesn’t mean all of them will survive and produce the same amount, but still that’s a lot of fruit. I imagine we’ll can a lot of it, make apple butter, jelly and preserves. The extra I guess will be given away.

Kevin,

It will be interesting to see how Blaze Prince works for you. I’ve been harvesting a single tree for a couple years and it’s been pretty disappointing. Sometimes some varieties just start out real slow, but I would have expected this one to start to kick in. Some of the Prince peaches have been real producers, others have been complete duds for me. June Prince is absolutely worthless here. Scarlet Prince is a heavy producer of excellent quality peaches in the flavor category.

Bob,

That’s interesting. I can’t imagine the problem U of K had was cold hardiness. At the Michigan Expo a couple months back one of the presenters was saying Guardian is the most cold hardy of the common peach rootstocks (i.e. Lovell, Bailey, etc.) in recent trials. If I remember right, the trials were done in CO.

The peaches I have on Guardian seem to perform as well as any others.

I wouldn’t completely discount the U of K trials, but sometimes trials like that can be somewhat limited and should be repeated for validity. The main reason I’m a bit skeptical of the U of K advice is that they are such an outlier of all the other data points I’ve heard (i.e. everything else I’ve read/heard suggests Guardian does well in a wide range of climates/locales).

The exception being Armillaria root rot. It doesn’t perform well in the presence of ARR, but then again, neither do most other peach rootstocks.

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Thanks for that info, I was sure you knew the characteristics of the different peach rootstocks. All the info I have was that the UK report said it didn’t survive well here, and based on your info on its hardiness, maybe it’s a disease or insect issue.

They also didn’t recommend Citation for some reason as well, stating it didn’t do well in a couple of trials they performed. I know a lot of folks on here don’t like it under peaches (or nectarines) because it seems to runt out, or just not do well. For plums and pluots it’s done well. I planted a pluot on it last year, and it seems to have grown as much as the other two on Myro.

I’m going to a grafting class in a couple weeks sponsored by the UK ag division, so I’ll try to ask them about these two rootstocks, if I can remember.

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I know this thread is about Kevin’s tree order, so I don’t want to derail it too much. So I hope he doesn’t mind the questions.

If your remember a couple years ago I asked you how big a bare root peach should grow in its first couple years. I have a Redhaven and a Coralstar that I planted in 2016. Both were 7/16" caliper and I headed them back to about 30" at planting. The RH has done basically nothing in three years, it is still about 3ft tall with a few small branches on it. The CS is taller, about 4ft tall, with a few more branches.

I think the reason they’ve been struggling is because the site they’re on has poor soil, and acidic, plus they’ve had issues with a bit of standing water after rainy periods.

I’ve fertilized them a couple times the last two years and they’re still lagging compared to my other two peach trees by the barn, which were planted a year later, but in much better soil.

I am planning on transplanting them to the same area where the others are. My questions to you are-

  1. Do I need to try to keep the root ball intact on the trees after I dig them up, or wash them off creating a bare root tree?

  2. After transplant, do I need to do any pruning of the branches?

  3. I assume the best time to move them will be while they’re dormant? I see some fruit buds on them, but don’t think they’re close to waking up. I know that will change in just a few weeks, though.

  4. When and what amount of fertilizer should I give them? I have straight N, like 34-0-0, or generic 10-10-10, which would be best? Do I also give them another dose in like June or July?

  5. Since they struggled so much for three years, do you think they’ll get back to a normal size in a few years?

Thanks. Again I apologize to Kevin.

Bob,

I’ve found peach trees here will grow about 5’ per year if the soil is good, the planting is raised, weed free. It’s more growth if the soil is loose beforehand.

I prune mine in the summer (sometimes a couple times) so they really aren’t 5’ tall. But they would get that tall if I didn’t prune them. I prune them back again in the fall. That’s generally when I try to select 3 thin scaffolds.

I sell a few trees and transplant quite a few for myself. I’ll admit, I don’t try to dig much root, especially for my grafted trees I transplant for myself. It’s just too much work to dig them up with a lot of root, and more work to dig a big hole to transplant to.

I don’t remove any dirt when transplanting. Whatever size root ball I pull out of the ground, I plant, unless the root ball is too big. In that case I root prune the roots to fit the hole I’ve dug.

I prune the branches back pretty hard at planting. The first thing I do is top the tree at about 30". The trees are generally pretty much sticks after I prune them at planting. I do this because I want to pick my own scaffolds and I don’t like picking scaffolds which have a very big diameter in reference to the trunk, so that generally means just about all the branches are removed when I plant my own stuff.

I move trees at dormancy, but some emerging leaf tissue doesn’t bother me. If there is any chance of much weather below freezing, I prefer to wait before moving.

In terms of fertilizer, I just use pretty much cheap N to get them going good. I wait until rain is imminent and then fertilize to minimize loss from volatilization. If the new peach trees aren’t growing fast enough for me, I just give them a little more fertilizer.

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Thanks for the reply.

Considering these trees haven’t grown all that much in three years, do I still need to top them off again, and lop off the branches? Or perhaps head back some of the branches?

OK. Is maybe a dry cup of the straight N fert I have a good amount? When do I give them (or my other peach trees) their first dose and the possible second dose? I’ve read that peaches usually get their first dose at bloom?

Regarding the new plant site, I’ll make sure they’ll be raised up a bit from the surrounding ground.

Thanks again.

Bob,

I actually prune the trees back at planting for a couple reasons. One is to get rid of the growth I don’t want as scaffolds.

The second reason is that once the little tree leafs out, if there is a lot of wood left on the tree, our strong winds will want to blow it over because it doesn’t have much of a root. Even with pruning the tree back at planting, peach trees will quickly put on enough growth, they will still wallow a hole out at the base of the tree. If continually allowed to wallow, they will eventually die, as the roots below slowly break off. At a minimum it will slow them way down as they try to regrow new roots from the continual root breakage. To prevent wallowing, I wait till they make a wallow hole, and fill the hole with sand. This has been my normal practice.

If your trees are three years old, that’s a bit of a different story. At that point they aren’t going to have any viable buds left on the trunk. In that case, you are probably stuck with the scaffolds you’ve already chosen. I would head those scaffolds back some, as long as there were some branches or buds I could head back to.

Sometime before the growing season starts is a good time to give the first dose of N. Around bloom is fine. Wait till you get a good rain and it packs the loose soil around the roots before fertilizing the little trees. If the soil is really loose, fertilizer can wash down and burn the roots.

A cup is a good amount to start with. Sometimes I go with about a couple cups spread around the tree. Wait a month and if you don’t see the trees really taking off, juice them again. I’ve fertilized young trees as late as August and gotten good responses in that growing season.

I’ve not burned any peach trees from N., but we have pretty heavy soil here. The only time I’ve burned trees was when my son once piled some blended fertilizer at the base of some young apple trees. We had a heavy rain and it washed the fertilizer down to the root zone and killed a few trees.

I may get some contemptuous remarks for advocating fertilizing young trees so heavily (in some circumstances) as poisoning ground water. But we are talking about very small areas here, not over-fertilizing a 1000 acres. People composting manure piles, or cattle pooping in a cattle pond, send way more N to the ground water than the minuscule amount we are talking about here.

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Thanks Mark for the advice. I’ll probably head some of the scaffolds back a bit. I’m not too worried about winds, as it’s not as windy here.

Our soil isn’t that heavy, it’s more of a silty loam, so I’ll need to be careful when I fertilize as we tend to get lots of rain. Even now, I’m wanting to dig up some soil samples to take to the extension office, but it’s been so wet here, I can’t dig up mud. We get maybe 3 days between drenching rains, it’s very frustrating. I need to get the tractor out but don’t want to tear up the turf in the process.

Anyways, it’s going to be a chore as I have to move these two peaches and three apples, because after three years they are just have not done well. I think it’s more a result of them being in soil that has a low water table and their roots are not liking it. If I was smart three years ago, I would have prepared my site a lot better. But, you learn as you go. Thanks to sites like this I’ve learned so much in a short amount of time.

OK, thanks for the suggestions, you’ve been very generous with your replies.

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Usually my peach trees start giving some fruit in year 4. At least where I am at. I have one peach tree that really filled out last year, year three. I expect to at least get a few pieces of fruit off of it this year. IF, big IF, the frost/freeze does not come at blossom time. Here in Ohio it always seems to freeze or have a heavy frost right when blossom.

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Thanks. I was thinking today about all the work it would take to dig them up, prepare the new site, and plant and prune them. The ground is really wet and I’d have to get his done soon, so I don’t know if it’s ever going to dry out enough. I might just hit them with a couple doses of fertilizer this year and see how they respond. That might be why they’ve struggled, the soil is poor and I really haven’t given many amendments since they were planted.

Didn’t you have a Contender that fruited last year? Did they have good size and flavor? How did they do disease and insect wise?

Yes, I have two Contender peach trees planted, good memory. They did great. I did not have any issues with bugs or diseases except for a little leaf curl the year before. I used copper spray in the fall and in the spring. It went away. The bugs were not an issue except for the Japanese beetles. They LOVE peach trees more than any other fruit tree I have. So I sprayed them again a few times and put out those Japanese beetle bag traps. I had to replace the bags 5 times last summer. Normally I only have to replace them about twice. They were horrible last year. I would give them some fertilizer only after the ground dries up some but not a huge nitrogen content percentage. I would not fertilize them any later than about the end of June.

Thanks. That’s what I thought you had. That’s good to hear about them being clean especially in our warm and humid environment.

My Contender is my biggest peach tree, about 5ft tall, so I’m hoping it’ll set some fruit this year. It looks like it has a few fruit buds on it. Of course, we’ll have to see how the blooms do with our late freezes. That’s one of the reasons I got it and Blushingstar as they are supposed to have hardier blossoms. When does yours usually bloom? How big was your tree when it produced and about what were the size and amount of the peaches?

I had about 80 lbs of peaches off my two trees. That is actual fruit only, minus the pits and the skins. I know because I had to weight the fruit to make peach preserves.
I had to cover them the last two years because we always get a freeze about the time they bloom. In 2017 they bloomed April 7th, I know because I took pictures of the trees covered with bed sheets to keep the frost off. In 2018 it was April 28th. I put that on my calendar. My tree was about 8 foot tall when it produced fruit.
I also have a RedHaven. It is smaller in size than the Contenders. It is about 2 feet shorter than the Contender trees. It produced fruit when it was a little over 6 feet high. I have another peach tree, a Flaming Fury variety. It is about 4 years old this year. It is about 5+ feet tall. I would think I could possibly get some fruit off of it this year. It really grew a lot last year, by the end of the season.
First year it produced fruit the Contenders put out about 20 lbs of fruit , combined. I had more with having two trees plus the Redhaven as well. Last year the RedHaven only had about 6 peaches on it, for some reason. It did not even have a lot of blossoms on it in the spring. I do not think I even covered it when I had the freeze/frost since it had no blossoms exposed to the outside. All the blossoms and then the fruit was on the inner branches. I will see what it does this year. It was an odd thing to get no fruit from it.

Is your 5 foot tree bushy, filled out? Or is it sort of scraggly?

Thanks for the info. 80lb is a lot of peaches! I imagine they weigh maybe 1/3-1/2lb at the most, so we’re talking about 200 fruits? Sounds like the late April bloom last year made the difference.

My Contender has some decent scaffolds, but they tend to be a bit upright and not evenly spread out around the tree. I’ve done some pulling down of some of the scaffolds, but I may also have to do some hinge cuts to get them down to a better angle.

Can we move our discussion to a more appropriate thread? I feel like I’ve derailed Kevin’s thread about his tree order. Lemme copy this to another thread.

I just wanted everyone to know how thrilled I am with Vaughn Nursery. I already received my order and the trees are absolutely OUTSTANDING. They are slightly smaller in caliper than trees I’ve received from other on-line sellers, but not by a lot and in some cases they are just as large.
My 15 trees all had some of the best looking roots I have ever seen on mail order bare-root trees. Both large roots and small hair-like roots are all left in tact and are fairly extensive. Often I’ve received trees from other vendors that had cut almost all the roots off- not these!
They look healthy, are not beat up, and were carefully packaged. They were bundled and the roots covered in damp wood shavings and everything wrapped nice, then put into a nice, large, long box. THe tips that were a little too long were all just folded over instead of cut off, that way I can top them when and where I want to. Every tree comes with 2 tags, one telling the root stock and one telling the type of tree it is.

To be honest, I’m just a little confused why this one nursery sells such incredibly good looking trees so much cheaper than all its competitors. Now, you do have to call them since they don’t have an on-line order system, but that isn’t a big deal to me. All my trees cost between $8.00 AND $8.50 EACH!!! The grafts are all healed in and these certainly aren’t trees that have just been grafted. When I spoke to them the guy told me the computer showed them not having any left of 3 late-season peaches which I really wanted to expand my harvest window. However, he said he would go out in the field and look around and see if he couldn’t find me one or more of those 3. Low and behold, when I got my order all 3 of those peaches were in it, and they were great looking (ie not culls that had been rejected in the field or anything). Those are now the trees I am most excited about: O’Henry, Big Red, and Parade. Along with Fairtime, I should have some good fruit late in the year. In short, this is the most satisfied I’ve ever been with a tree order.

I’ve attached a photo of several trees lined up in my office and a close up of just some random roots-but they all looked like this.

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Well, like CVN, they are both wholesalers and don’t advertise to the retail market. Also, they are both the grower and seller. So, you don’t have the markup that you would with a reseller.

I never worry about the size of peach trees. They grow so incredibly fast here, as I’m sure you know. You could have an 8 to 10 foot tree by the end of the growing season.

Folks at Vaughn are always super nice when I’ve been there. How was the shipping cost? You should take a trip down to both nurseries sometime. I’ve been in the cold storage barn of both places, and out in the fields at CVN. Pretty amazing operations.

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My Vaughn’s grew great.

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