What happens when you don’t prune and don’t thin your Peach Trees?
Planned on removing these 6 year old Flame Prince trees so we did not prune or thin them this year.
Lots of broken scaffolds and all 4 scaffolds broke on one tree
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Looks like the are some very nice peaches on that tree…
Nicer than some on the trees that I really fussed over this whole year.
Wonder if father nature is trying to tell me something? 
. 
Mike
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Mike
These threes were sprayed along with the other trees before they broke down.
I’m very surprised by the size of the peaches. They are about ready to pick and many will be sellable unless we get a bunch of rain. Have to be careful to keep the PYO folks out of the row with the broken trees
Peaches do well in my area, but apples don’t, I fuss over my apple trees a lot but this is my last year with them. We are also getting rid of all the peach trees that ripen before Redhaven along with half of the Flame Prince
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Why are you removing them? Trouble with that variety?
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The flavor/sweetness can be good so we are keeping half of them. They normally start to ripen about the same time that we get huge rainfalls and the quality fails. Last year we got 5 inches just before they ripened.
We got 2 inches today with more coming so everything is right on schedule.
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I had trouble judging ripeness on my flame prince peach this year. About a third of them were over ripe and mealy around rhe pit while not fully soft on the outside. Is this a variety that should be picked well before they soften on the tree? This is my first year harvesting off of this 4 yr old tree so maybe wll be better next year. Flavor on the properly ripened ones was awesome.
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We have trouble judging their ripeness too. We have always picked them a little too early and it took a week for some of them to ripen. Fortunately, its our last peach of the season so we are less critical about quality.
Do you get a lot of rain during its ripening time too?
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Why are you getting rid of the early peach varieties?
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I’m in zone six and only have a handful of cresthaven peaches this year. They are just a little bigger than golfballs. I think that the extreme rainfall in spring affected the fruit production,
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We get pop up afternoon storms anytime from june through august. So yes we do get some heavy rains sometimes, but it can be very unpredictable too. I think we average just over one inch per week.
FP seems to sweeten up long before it softens. I tested a couple really hard ones and they were very sweet and crunchy. A few that had a little green background around the stem ripened up really nice, but yeah it took several days. I have no idea what im doing so just trying to figure it out. Thanks blueberry.
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Very nice looking peaches. My Contender peach trees looked like that two years ago. I went out of town for a couple of weeks.The peaches were less than the size of a golf ball before I left. When I came back we had had 4" of rain two days before and another 3" of rain the week prior. Those peaches got huge in a short period of time.
Send some of that rain my way, PLEASE! We have not had any rain, to speak of, in about 4 weeks.
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They are all clingstone and most folks demand freestone. Also, they are less likely to produce a full crop but more likely to have major split pit problems.
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If you don’t mind another question, what makes the early peaches less likely to produce a full crop? Do they bloom earlier?
I’m only about an hour west of Greensboro, and I actually had what I’d call pretty good success with no-spray peaches for the first time this year, so I’m thinking a little more about peaches, particularly early peaches, because it seems like early ripening varieties leave less time for problems. I think there was a little worm in almost all my peaches, but the worm damage was minimal, and at least half of my peaches ripened with at least a third of the peach not yet ruined by brown rot.
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Congratulations on your no spray peaches this year. Chill Hours seems to be the dominant factor in determining crop reduction from frost damage and most of my freestone peaches range from about 850-1050 hours. Contender is the most reliable at 1050 hours. My early peaches are less, although some nursery show Rich May as 800-900. When Rich May hits its great for an early peach but frost damage is normal on this variety at my location
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that is an amazing amount of peaches. If I could get at least one of mine to produce half that amount I’d be thrilled.
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I realize this is an old thread but did the peaches off of the tree in the pic taste good? All of my peaches that over cropped last year for the most part were tasteless. Now I wonder if it was rain and not over cropping …
Rick,
I missed this thread last year. Wanted to mention to you that we have a few peaches before Redhaven which are very productive here, and taste very good. PF9a-007 starts ripening about 5 days before Redhaven here. Always sets a big crop of nice sized peaches.
Risingstar ripens a couple weeks before Redhaven. Delicious peach which sets heavy.
Both peaches aren’t fully freestone, but if customers ask about it, I show them how to pop the flesh off the pit with a knife.
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No the peaches on the overcropped tree were terrible! They never sized up and lots of the scaffold branches broke. I planned to remove the trees and just wanted to see what happened if they were unpruned and unthinned,
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Olpea
Thank you for the suggestions. 2 weeks before Redhaven would be perfect. Do those peaches have higher chill hours too? Most of the failure of my early peaches is frost damage because they bloom so early.
Also, do you have a plan to sell your fruit during the Covid19 outbreak?
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I don’t know their chill hours but as I recall they bloom about with Redhaven.
We got frozen out this year pretty bad. If we have enough to sell, I plan to spray paint 6’ lines on the gravel, and have signs saying stay 6’ apart. Also plan to have a glass shield like you see in many stores.
Our stand is outside, so I think there is a lot less risk than inside stores. I still don’t know if people will come out because of Covid. Plus we will have very few peaches this season. Going to try to focus more on tomatoes, blackberries and sweet corn this season.
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