Peach Tree Help - Austin, TX Late Bloomers

I have 3 peach trees. Two (Tex-Prince and Tex-King 1) have been in place since 2016 and one in 2017 (Tex-King 2). The first two are still fairly small with a truck diameter of no more than 2 inch. Meanwhile, the last one (Tex-King 2) is incredibly vigorous and surpassed the other two in size within a year and now has a truck diameter of about 4".

Tex-King 2 regularly flowers at the right time each year and produces fruit.

Tex-Prince and Tex-King 1 will flower 1-2 months later and may get 3 fruits total. These fruits never mature properly. This is despite Tex-King 1 and 2 being the same variety.

It seems like part of the issue with the fruit for Tex-Prince and Tex-King 1 is the late blooming. Is there any way to reset a tree’s internal clock so that it blooms at the right time of year? Thanks!

Not really.

It sounds like your latest planted peach is doing the right thing and that the first two have some sort of issues, possibly planting area and maybe rootstock? We got lots of good people from texas around here and maybe you should figure out what varieties work best in your area. You did a good job buying stuff with your states name in it but maybe find out what works best in your location and just go with that and hopefully you get more overlap. Either way 2 peaches or even a single should set a better crop than what you described. Do you have plenty of bees and pollination on the flowers?

Richard - Thanks for your reply! I think the bees may be part of the issue. I’ve seen the bees around Tex-King2 and the nearby pomegranate at the Tex-King T2’s bloom time but not nearly as many when Tex-Prince and Tex-King 1 bloom. That’s part of the reason I want to get them all synchronized with their blooming schedule.

For the next trees, I’ll try to talk to someone about local varieties that work. It’s really strange to me that the 2 Tex-Kings could have such different results. Maybe I just got a bad batch of trees in 2016. I really hate the possibility that I may have wasted 4 years on duds.

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I heavily suspect they are on a rootstock that is not near as compatible for your area, although it could be lots of things and one being that they could be mislabeled. You could go down the rabbithole on issues and a soil test would not hurt. Post some photos and maybe change the title to Peach tree help - ___ your part se/sw panhandle etc__ Texas

Buying from reputable nurseries is very important and you can get advice here on what people have had success with there is also a list. It definitely sucks to waste so much time / energy / effort and its worthwhile to buy from reputable growers on here or quality nurseries that focus on labeling.

Lots of different ideas on here on how to attract bees for blooming, Personally i have bees and i go with the you need to feed them regularly for them to visit your trees and pollinate them. Its a give and take thing so in general bees need a good 100 sq ft area like a 10 x 10 of currently flowering nectar and pollen producing plants so usually a larger area than people give.
Personally i go with perrenials and reseeding annuals and you do not need to spend tons of time on the beds and just enjoy the landscape.

Great thread Low maintenance perennial flower garden

Also planting summer flowering trees is very beneficial things like lindens, basswoods, jujubes, persimmons, black locust, coffee tree, bee bee tree… will definitely mark your location in the hives around you.

Thanks, Richard. I really appreciate the help. I’ll give these another fruiting season to get their act together while I get things right on my part.

Thanks for the link on the flower garden. I was just thinking about what I would need to do in order to make my place more bee friendly. Maybe if I can get them to stick around long enough with other flowers, they will be there when my late blooming trees are ready for them.

Do you think fertilizing the trees earlier would make them break dormancy at a different schedule?

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Yes a early dose of nitrogen and organics like fish emulsion, alfalfa meal add nitrogen and get the ground warmed up earlier if you are doing a chemical source i would do urea or calcium/potassium nitrate, others would know better for sure. You would want to rebalance p and k in a higher dose either at the same time or a week or two earlier or later so you do not force too much vegetative growth.

Definitely a variety of flowers helps with honeybees as well as bumblebees mason bees butterflies and other pollinators.

Sounds like they are not getting enough chill hours. Trees that bloom that much later usually do not have enough chill and the flowers will not set fruit. Peaches can be pollinated from wind as well as insects so that should not be the problem. Sounds like the first couple of trees were mislabled. I know if I do not get enough chill hours on LeFeliciana Peach I will not get any fruit. Given another 100 hours of chill and I have to thin pretty hard.

But if you get a colder winter they may set well. The last couple of years have been pretty low for chill hours. We would get a couple of weeks of cold weather followed by warm weather. The warm weather can actually reduce the chill hours in winter.

Thanks, Gary. It’s interesting that you both mentioned that the trees could be mislabeled. Is that something that happens a lot?

If they were mislabeled it would explain why I have such a different performance from the same variety of peach.

I have a peach tree bought and planted before I knew about peach trees. I think this one is a sentinel. Had 2-3 peaches last year after bearing a bunch the year before. I don’t like taking care of peaches so don’t ask what I’ve done for it…. Nothing is the answer. So this year it looked to be dying with lots of suckers coming up. Today I got in there to see what was going on and cut out about 5-6 large suckers. There is one branch of the tree that looks great!!! And the rest is dead or soon to be. So what do I do with a peach tree with one branch. I left a couple of the suckers that I guess I could graft to although the thought of grafting peaches makes me not want to try.

How old is you tree?
Overall, is it productive?
Do the fruit taste good?

Maybe 5 years old. It has fruited a couple of those years. One year it had a lot and I didn’t thin them enough and they were small but good tasting. It had maybe two peaches last year. I haven’t sprayed anything. I don’t have any clue about it except the tag said sentinel peach and I bought it from a man selling trees in a temporary location. I bought two others and this is the only one that lived. So yes the peaches taste good but it really hasn’t produced a lot and I really have trouble blaming the tree because I don’t take good care of it. I’m amazed at how healthy the branch looks because my other peaches are either dead or suffering from it being too wet here.

Well, Katy, your story about your first peach trees sounded so similar to mine. I bought my “Red Haven” from a seasonal roadside stand.

It was a potted tree. It already lefed out. As I put it in ground, all the soil fell off. (now I know that was a sign of a newly potted up tree that was not yet established). After planting, temperature dropped, the leafed out tree never woke up. My first peach tree was not as successful as yours :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:. I did not think it was Red Haven, either.

Those suckers look healthy. You can keep them and see if they produce any edible fruit. However if your soil continue to be wet, those suckers may not be healthy for long.

As you may know, planting on a mound would be your option. In my area, planting a peach tree without care won’t end well. But I don’t know how well peaches grow organically in your area.
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That might work well for this year but any other year I would be watering, watering, watering! This has been an exceptional year with more rain than we know how to deal with.

I wondered about the suckers’s fruit. But should I just leave that limb of the main tree and see what it does? I thought about leaving it, let one of the suckers grow, and graft to the other sucker as they are pretty well spaced out to make a 3 scaffold tree. Would it be much different than having a frankentree there? Just be three trunks (but the same root source) in the same spot. :flushed::flushed:. Basically when I prune off the dead wood it’s going to be very lopsided! :grimacing:

Since the growth is from a peach rootstock, I am not sure how good the fruit wiil be. I agree that you should keep 3 well-spaced branches (from that rootstock) and graft interesting varieties on.

You can correct the lope-sided issue by pruning. Trim off more on the vigorous one to allow the two weaker branches to catch up.

Grafting peaches can be a challenge. You can try chip budding or T budding this month or next.

So technically I could remove a couple of buds from the branch that is doing well and t-bud it into the remaining suckers….???

The two other original branches of the tree are dead or essentially dead. So can I use the suckers to make up for the other branches of the tree.

You can do T budding or chip budding about now. There are some good tutorials with pics on the forum. You can graft on those two suckers.

However, please keep an eye out on that vigorous branch. It could get out of proportion if you don’t remove some top growth to avoid it being top heavy.

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