I purchased several bare root trees from Stark Brothers.
Attached is a picture of a Reliance peach I planted.
I want to make a heading cut at the red line. (~2 ft high)
Note that there is a bud above the line and some around a foot off the ground.
I don’t know if the inactive nodes will shoot new buds in the red circles.
My impression is they were damaged or broken off from Stark Bro’s.
Please let me know if you think they’re just latent or dead.
I think you’d be fine, i find i pretty much always get a bud the next year or two at the branch collar on my peaches, id say youll be gine.
I don’t see any issues either. Happy pruning.
I made the cut just above the active bud on the top.
It was exactly 2 ft about ground. I will try to update this post when I can.
When I buy peach trees, many times there are not enough live buds on the trunk to form scaffolds, but there generally are some live active buds at the base of the trunk, just above the graft.
When that happens, I just head the tree back to a few inches above the live buds at the base, then simply grow a new trunk. I’ve done this many many times.
One thing to be careful of when doing this is that with all the energy going into one or two buds, those shoots will grow very fast and will get bushy before they have a chance to strengthen. Then a high wind comes along and breaks them. To avoid that, I keep pruning the vigorous shoot I’m using for the new trunk. By repeatedly and moderately pruning the vigorous shoot, it allows it to strengthen and avoids breakage.
A lot new fruit tree growers are too chicken to do this kind of pruning. I was one of them about 20 years ago but now I am comfortable doing it. Lol.