I got two trees that were being cleared out at the local farm store. Both looked practically dead two falls ago. Last spring I wasn’t sure if they’d make it so I didn’t prune. As you can see both trees were never pruned and have a central leader shape which I know isn’t good. I’m still learning apple pruning but really have no idea where to start with these peaches. Both trees put out some growth last year so I’m going to try getting them to have the open bowl. I’ve attached pictures with red marks where I’m thinking to prune. Any advice? My other thought is to just top them and hope new branches pop.
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Hi Alex,
Those look like excellent young survivors!
Here are a few videos about how to prune peach trees to achieve the open vase shape.
Keep in mind that Peaches bear fruit and bloom on second year wood, so they need to grow well during the spring and summer to assure a bountiful crop for the following year. I would eliminate most of the lower limbs to give energy to the scaffolds you select near the top. You want only 3-4 scaffolds that span the 360 degree circle. Try to select scaffolds with only very strong crotch angles as they will be your strongest ones able to bear heavy fruit loads. On the scaffolds you keep go out towards the tip of each branch and tip prune about 1/3 off leaving an outward pointing bud. The below videos helped me. I would wait until buds start swelling in spring to do this so the wounds heal quicker.
Take care,
Dennis
Kent, Wa
Pruning a Young Peach Tree
Pruning a Two-Year Old Peach Tree
Olpea’s pruning advice and video: Note pruning while in bloom!
Virginia’s illustrated Peach tree pruning based on age of tree, very good:
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This is a quote from the last article which to me is the hardest to do…“Young peach trees must be pruned carefully to develop and maintain fruiting wood near the tree center. The fruiting surface of poorly pruned trees will move farther from the tree center each year”
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Those trees are so stunted that I think you are asking the wrong question. By the second year the trees should be sending out very vigorous annual wood and standard pruning guidance is based on managing vigorous healthy trees with at least 2 ft. shoots of annual wood from young trees.
If you cut all the places you suggest the trees may regain vigor and you can start to worry about the permanent shape. If you don’t have a big squirrel and or raccoon presence you can consider the conventional open center, V shape with 3 scaffolds starting a foot or two from the ground. Otherwise you may want a branchless trunk for the first 4-6 ft of the tree to allow fitting with baffles.
Fertilizer, organic mulch and moist, well drained soil should inspire vigorous growth. Cutting off all that wood will remove the flower buds which for peaches in a runt can be staggering to growth. Just as long as there are some vital leaf buds left on the tree.
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I don’t want to speaak for @Olpea but I think he has remarked in the past about not having scaffold branches the same diameter as the main trunk. In the first pic, the large branch on the right side could be too big around
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I probably emphasize diameter ratios more than anyone on this forum, although not simply in the context of the relative diameter of scaffolds.
If a scaffold is more than half the diameter of the trunk it often leads to a weak union because the trunk cannot generate enough tissue to affectively wrap around the scaffold at the union. In the worse case this causes inverted bark where branches push against each other with every year of growth, often leading to split trunks of codominant leaders. An oversized and excessively upright scaffold becomes a competitor with the assigned trunk and can lead to the overall destruction of a tree.
I didn’t address the oversized top right branch because I assume the cut to the trunk will be made below that. However, that is the cut I would make because I train even peach trees to a central leader for the first couple of years before making a cut to create an open center tree… usually. Almost all my nursery trees are trained to allow the installation of squirrel-coon baffles.
To me, understanding the significance of ratios of branch unions where there is always a dominant member of any coupling of larger wood is one of the fundamental aspects of truly grasping the mechanics of pruning. I am continuously guided by the principle of ratios when doing all the pruning I do and I’ve never met anyone who spends more of their time than I do pruning fruit trees.
Apple trees are a lot more complicated to prune than peach trees, but peach trees require a different kind of attention to assure they don’t get permanently out of shape because some mistakes cannot be corrected later on- most varieties don’t generate new vegetative growth from old wood. With an out of control apple tree you could usually make a single cut leaving a stump and the tree will generate rapid new growth that a skillful pruner could use to create a brand new tree. Such a cut would generally kill a peach tree that requires vegetative buds fully formed the previous season to generate new growth.
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Thank you for the information. Some great articles and videos which are very helpful. When I got these peach trees they were $5 bucks a pop in the fall. I’ll prune them this year and add a gold 2 inch layer of compost around the base of each. If I can get some of the large growth this year I’ll keep them, If not I’ll pull them out and buy some new ones.
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The last peach tree that I started
What it looked like the next spring.
You can be pretty brutal to them if needed to get the shape you want… and they will grow well anyway.
TNHunter
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Alex, I had the same exact initial thought as Alan, even before I read his comment.
The peach trees lack vigor. I went back and read your first post to see if the trees have indeed been through two growing seasons. You mention they looked practically dead two falls ago, which means they are at least 2 years old (a full growing season counts as a year in fruit tree nomenclature).
I made your pictures as big as possible (by clicking on it and clicking on it again). This enabled me to see, indeed the bark on the trunk looks old. It should look young and succulent.
Now I’m going to mention something which may surprise you, and may hurt your feelings a bit (although that’s not my intention at all).
The lack if vigor of your peach trees is very likely not due to because they were on death’s door when you got them. I know that sounds counter intuitive, but young peach trees will turn around on a dime, if treated well.
It’s possible the trees were completely root bound when you bought them, or had borers. But borer symptoms are pretty easy to spot. And root bound peach trees will still grow more than yours, if managed well.
But please know that’s not a criticism of you. We are all at different levels of knowledge. I’ve probably killed more peach trees by lack of knowledge than you will ever plant.
Let’s address some potential issues for the weak growth of your trees. Alan mentioned some, but I want to address them in more detail.
Part of the issue may be lack of fertility which you focused on in your second post in this thread. In that case, a mulch layer is a start. But, I would also add some supplemental N as a top dress to the soil. This can come from animal manures, or purchased synthetic N/urea, or even your own pee, if you wish.
It’s pretty hard to kill peach trees from too much N (although I’ve done that too). But, a 2" layer of purchased wood mulch isn’t going to do much for your peach trees. Fresh grass clippings are a good source of N. If you are near a city, curb shop some grass clippings on trash day. A large ring 4" thick of fresh grass clippings every month, during the growing season, will do a lot to jazz those trees.
The second thing to focus on is killing the sod around the peach trees. From your pics, it looks like there was sod growing right up next to the trunks of the peach trees. Peach trees hate sod growing next to them. That is, they don’t compete well at all with sod. Kill a large ring of sod around the peach trees, one way or another. This can be done through mulching, weed barrier, hoeing, or a judicious use of glyphosate (be careful not one drop of glyphosate gets on the trunk or foliage of the peach trees).
It’s very important the ground stay clear of all sod around the trees. A generous weed free ring of at least 5’ in radius would be my recommendation, for a young tree. This is a case where more is generally better (up to a point).
Next up, check the soil to make sure it drains well. You shouldn’t see any water standing on the soil. Wait till the wettest part of the spring. Then after a good rainstorm, dig a hole about a foot down about an hour after the rainstorm. There shouldn’t be any water in the bottom of the hole (just mud).
If there is water at the bottom of the hole, soil drainage is poor, and will require you to build mounds of dirt to plant future peach trees in, if you want them to thrive.
Lastly, pruning peach trees adds vigor, not detracts. The only case where I prune peach trees less is if they are in a severe battle with canker. In that case, I’ve found less pruning helps the tree heal the canker faster. In all other cases I can think of, pruning peach trees invigorates them.
So yes, this spring head the peach trees back some. Choose the smallest shoots alive as potentials scaffolds. When you head the trees back, fertilize, and kill sod, and the small remaining shoots should take off like a rocket. After that we can start to really focus on scaffold selection, and pruning models.
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Do you have picture of how this tree looked in the 3rd and 4th leaf.
@olpea. Thank you for the detailed response and no offense taken. I appreciate the insight. I knew little to nothing about peaches outside my mom has a peach tree and I posted a picture of her tree years ago that had leaf curl. Her trees are bow huge and grow like crazy. Well it never occured to me to do anything to the two ones I bought. So last spring they leaf out and I thought great and then the leaves curled horribly and dropped off. I thought they would die but cme later June/July they started to leaf out again. I hit them with copper in late November and plan to hit them again this spring. I need to spray under my apple trees this spring again and will do the same under the peaches. Maybe instead of spraying I’ll try the compost then cardboard method with mulch on top. Thank you again I really appreciate it.
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I think you should spray again before the bud breaks to prevent leaf curl disease and give that tree minimum 1 lb of 10-10-10 in mid spring and another lb mid summer.
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Peach Leaf Curl will drastically affect tree growth and eventually kill it. I lived with it and lost many trees (and zero peach production) for years until finding this forum. I now use Ziram. You have to spray right before bud break. Spraying later won’t help at all for that year. When the tree drops its leaves and regrows them, the new leaves don’t have peach leaf curl
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@Oregon_Fruit_Grow definitely will spray with copper again. No other pictures unfortunately. I’ll hit it with 10-10-10. I had a soil test and nitrogen was good but I was deficient in K and P. The P was severely low per recommendations. Also they recommended sulfur as the PH was 7.5.
What do you mean, under the peaches? You need to spray the entire surface of the tree. Search for some sprays for PLC on this forum unless copper alone works for you. Copper doesn’t help me at all
Sorry. I’ll be spraying roundup under the peaches. The copper I will spray on the tree. Sorry for the confusion
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You’re getting some good advice here Alex.
RE: A little more on leaf curl.
It’s a fungus which can affect the leaves systemically. That’s why when you see it, it’s too late. As you experienced, the leaves fall off and the tree regrows new ones (assuming it has the energy to do so -which is most of the time).
Some folks have severe leaf curl pressure. Others not so much. Here in the lower Midwest, a good spray once anytime during the dormant season is all it takes to whip it for that season. As mentioned, you’ll want to make sure you get your spray on before the leaf scales loosen. I try to do it in the fall (after leaf drop). Sometimes I spray it in late Feb./early March. But I make sure I get the spray on before I see any green, or flower bud expansion.
RE: Soil tests for N
It’s great you are having some soil testing done. But soil tests are great for testing N. Many soil labs don’t even routinely test for it in their most common test packages (although Universities generally do).
A couple problems are that available N is hard to test for. It requires some sophistication. Another problem is that N migrates so easily, it can be there one season and gone the next.
I won’t say don’t test for N, but it should be used in conjunction with field observations and leaf sample testing.
Here’s something on it which outlines some of the problems.
https://www.hill-labs.co.nz/news/latest-news/soil-nitrogen-tests-demystified/
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^this is correct. I guess it’s very rare for any soil to be sufficient in N.
I have sent soil sample to my state university for testing, they do charge more for testing N and take a week or more extra time.
Is there any method such as GDD accumulation to estimate when the buds start to soften and swell to time the sprays.
I actually like that shape for a definitive tree shape.
Before I used to do the classic vase with primary secondary and tertiary branches, but I started following a professional fruit tree prunner in Spain that has a YouTube channel (he basically explains how and what principles to apply from professional orchards to hole gardens, as in his own words, not everything done professionally is what always applies to home gardens).
I can link some videos if anyone is interested, but they are in Spanish.
The basic rules for forming a peach tree he shows are pretty much similar in profesional orchards and home grown trees, and what I saw that really got me was that the branches are just one primary branch up to the height you want the tree to be, and the fruiting wood comes directly from those primary branches.
It helps so much when you have to prune, has you can distribute the new fruiting wood simetrically, coming out laterally from the main branch, like a fish spine.
He never tops the primary branches while forming the tree, and if there are many branches near the top, he prunes the spare ones to give that growing a clear dominance.
Once the tree is at ones desired final height, he then tops the branches.
Fruiting pruning is more or less the basic one for peaches, shortening the branches that fruited last year to an inch, to promote new fruiting wood to come out from the base, and he also clears out all unwanted branches (be it by excessive number of them, or too thin, or coming outwards or inwards), also cutting them to an inch, to promote always fresh growth that grows close to the tree structure. He then shortens the wood that is to fruit next year to like 40-50 cm.
The fact you can just focus on one main branch makes it so much easier to fit the fruiting wood, without having to see if this fruiting wood crosses with the one coming from another secondary branch… Etc. Easy and clearcut, for a species like peaches that requires so much annual renewal of fruiting wood.
The trees in summer look full and nice, even if there is no branching. Like your typical vase tree, as peaches just grow so much.
I’m really pleased with the method, as you all might be able to tell 
P.D: you might sometimes use a secondary branch if you need to fill out a lateral space, but coming out close to the base, near the trunk, or you might open a main branch with some wood coming outwards and then leave that wood grow without topping it.
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