I go hard with the summer pruning. The waterspouts don’t stand a chance. Generally throughout the year, cut back 1/3 to 2/3, sometimes all of new growth. That mainly depends on the branch and how it affects the overall shape of the tree. The main goal is an low(under 8’) open center tree. So those branches that angle towards the center, they disappear 100%. After the winter pruning, when I do shaping, there is a lot of lost new growth, due to that factor alone.
1 Like
For anyone interested in how we prune, I was out in the backyard and pruned a couple trees. Here’s a before and after pic of the tree pictured above. I let it get too tall this summer, so had to take quite a bit off.
It probably would have had about 100 flower buds on it. I cut just about all them off. Now it only has enough wood to raise about 8 peaches. It’s a sacrifice made to build a good tree.
Here’s another before pic:
Here is the after:
The tree will put on a lot of foliage and now start putting more energy into developing a good three branch scaffold system.
10 Likes
Mark,
No wonder I can never prune well, too greedy for most fruit possible 
Thanks for the great side by side pics.
1 Like
Now that’s brutal 
Looking at that I think I need to prune my Contender a bit more. I’m also very greedy for fruit. In some cases I think “I’ll keep this branch just this year to get some fruit and then next year take it out after the rest of the tree start producing”.
4 Likes
Actually Susu, a lot of times you can get away with that. Especially if the tree is an early fruiting variety. You can let it fruit on some shoots you don’t want to keep, then prune them off before they start shading anything you want to keep and develop.
We don’t do that because it’s just easier to manage lots of trees as a herd, instead of as individuals. So we go through and prune all the first year trees the same way, the second year trees the same way, etc. Labor becomes a pretty big deal when you have to pay for it. We just resign ourselves we aren’t going to start getting any real fruit from a tree till the third year.
4 Likes
I like that a lot
1 Like
How old is the tree in the background?
That peach tree has been in the ground 8 seasons (This summer will be it’s 9th.)
1 Like
There was a notification to me that someone watched this thread. As such, I finally got some time to post an update to possibly assist someone in pruning their peaches to an open vase.
A couple weeks ago I took a photo before bloom, tried to take the photo at the same angle to show what the tree looks like a couple years later.
Keep in mind this is a Contender peach tree which grows straight up. That makes things harder because, unless one ties down scaffolds (which I don’t have time to do anymore) it requires a lot more pruning on young trees to get them to branch horizontally.
As such they take about a year longer (or more) to get into production. This tree is now in it’s fourth season.
Here is a pic of the tree in bloom a few days ago:
I actually pruned the tree a little bit before the pic to straighten it up. It would normally produce maybe 75 good quality peaches after thinning. This year has been been horrible spring weather, so we don’t expect much. But the pruning through the years may help fellow peach enthusiasts. Contender takes about three prunings per summer train it to horizontal.
7 Likes