Perhaps I’m misinterpreting what you are communicating. But leaving a stub cut will promote more new branch growth.
We leave stub cuts (we sometimes call them a “hat rack”) on peach trees (mostly older ones) in order to promote lots of new shoots at the stub cut. Older peach trees can get large areas of blind wood. Sometimes the only wood available on the blind portion is a water spout. Instead of removing the water spout completely, we prune it back to a stub cut/hat rack. This will cause several new shoots to grow at the stub cut. The lower ones will grow more horizontal, then we can come back later and prune the more vertical upright shoots of the hat rack and leave the more horizontal ones.
That’s very normal for a young peach tree. By removing all the growth that you did, you allowed sunlight to hit live, but “inactivated” leaf buds. Also those buds were activated because they no longer had suppressive hormones acting on them. Lastly, the root/canopy balance has changed so that the remaining above ground portion of the tree has more nutrient availability from the roots.
Depending on the age of the tree, sometimes peach trees will even produce adventitious buds (buds which form on hardwood, where previously there were no buds). Paddy seems to describe this on his peach tree. This is more common on peach branches where the bark is smooth. If the branch has rough bark, it’s not very common for adventitious buds to form on peach trees. Sometimes it’s difficult to get adventitious buds to form on smooth bark.
As Paddy mentioned, your new growth should have plenty of time to turn into hardwood before winter.
We don’t do much bending of branches anymore (because it’s too time consuming) so we just prune to train trees. However, bending branches is a tried and true method to help shape a tree. Just be careful not to break the young shoots when bending them. We used to press coat hanger wires deep into the ground and bend the upper end into a hook shape, then use a piece of cotton string to tie the branches down to the coat hanger wires. We found much more consistent results that way, compared to hanging weights on the branches we wanted to train.
@Paddy how long should I keep the branches bent? I mean how long does it take for those branches to stay put in the place I want them to be. Here in this picture, I have tied down a different peach tree branch to be horizontal to the ground, this is probably a 1 or 2 year branch that came from the nursery. I am using some plastic twine and a velcro around the branch, the twine is then tied to the stake driven into the ground.
Not in summer. Cut upright vigorous branches( usually already further branched out along) and leave a few inches redirected the energy to those already branched out branches, to speed up them maturity, to promote flower buds on these branches.
If the water spouts are not branched yet. I don’t cut them, instead, I turn the water spouts to side ways. this way, the water spouts will become fruit bear branches next spring.
I think perhaps we are saying the same thing here? If the shoot has branched in summer, it will have some horizontal shoots at the base. By doing a stub cut, in summer those branches will continue to grow, and in fact, grow at a faster rate, as you mention.
If the shoot hasn’t branched yet, and a stub cut is made in summer, it will force the buds at the base of the shoot to grow new shoots.
Either way, by leaving a stub cut, it will promote lots of new growth, either by causing the existing shoots at the base to grow more vigorously, or by causing the buds at the base of the shoot to break and start growing.
The point I think for any new person learning to prune peach trees to remember is that stub cuts promote lots of thick growth at that location. Thinning cuts (i.e. cutting the vigorous branch/shoot off completely) reduce thick growth at that location on the tree.
If a new pruner were to leave too many stub cuts, the peach tree will quickly become choked with growth. Conversely, when pruning on developing scaffolds, if too many thinning cuts are made along a main scaffolds, there will be areas of blind unproductive wood.
That’s a tried and true method of making more vertical shoots productive.
Thanks, and I have a few followup questions appreciate your patience.
I purchased this Oregon Curl Free Peach in May 2023. It was in a 7" pot two feet tall and had a couple of flowers which I removed. I planted it in a 10 gallon pot on May 10th (See picture 1).
After 2-3 weeks I headed the tree to 18" and and followed up with thinned all but 4 scaffolds towards end of June. Then, I cut back the the scaffolds to an outer bud to be 15-17" in length and it has put out additional laterals as you can see in the picture 2 & 3
Questions:
1.From what I have been reading once planted and headed the trees grow scaffolds throughout the summer and they are pruned during dormancy for shape. Am I “over” training this young tree for the first year and making it to grow many laterals in this year rather them growing next year after dormant pruning.
I guess it will set some blossoms on the laterals next year, while it might have set those blossoms on the 4 major scaffolds if I had not cut back the scaffolds this summer. What I have done so far impact the way it will behave next year?
Since I have shaped the tree significantly on this planted year, is dormant pruning necessary in spring which increases chances of disease due to wet Portland, OR weather?
