I am hooked on peaches now. Olpea sent me some Winblo scions. This year they started to produce. I have Winblo, Loring peach trees. The Winblo and Loring were so good. That I am looking for some earlier peaches and later peaches right now. I love their flowers as well so if anyone know of a showy type please refer some varieties. Scions wood will be greatly appreciated…
Anyway, I am doing some researching about a high intensity growing system call Quad V or perpendicular V with 4 scaffolds. Dr. Jim Schupp said 7’ between tree but said nothing about row spacing. It looks like every article I read said 20’ - 24’ row spacing but they have mechanical equipment. Does anyone know or have try row spacing for home grower? currently I have my peaches at 20’ apart but that’s too far apart. I was thinking 10’ - 12’ row spacing but that maybe too close. Here is Dr. Jim Schupp video:
Also when do you prune these babies and how? I mean do you flush cut 2 year old wood in the summer so you’ll get more green fruiting wood? or do you leave all the 1 year old wood and flush cut the 2 year old wood in early spring.
Grafting. I got 100 percent take when I do indoor grafting but I can only do about 10 max (spacing). Do you know when would be a good time to do out door graft? I want about 20 trees. I have no clue what I would do with all those fruits but I love watching them flower and fruit.
I was watching various vids on You Tube last night and came across this one about testing of various training methods of peaches. I’m not a commercial grower by any means, but found this interesting. I thought @Olpea mind find it particularly informative, especially considering the yield results they got.
And it does has some info about first and second year training of the trees that maybe @Sunny_Orchard could benefit from, since he started the thread, although it’s a couple years old.
Thanks. I should have known someone one here might have brought this subject up. Your peach grove looks very nice.
How did your peach harvest do last year? Don’t you have Contenders, if so, how have they done? I have one and it’s my biggest tree, so I’m hoping for some fruit this year, barring the usual late freezes.
My peach orchard is nothing compared to the picture I took in Colorado! Olpea was right- it felt like I was in the garden of eden when I walked around the orchard in the picture
I’m 18X20 with open center trees but I can pick all the fruit from the ground.
Peaches did great last year even with two days of low 20’s during bloom. Contenders almost always do well and its one of my favorites. Peaches do not seem to be as sensitive to freezing weather during early bloom as the charts indicate, but after fruit set a freeze seems to wipe out all varieties.
If I started over, I would give some quad V or parallel V trees a try but I believe getting these trees into the proper form would be a lot harder. It’s hard to screw up the pruning on a open center tree.
So far the innovation in peach training systems isn’t really innovative or friendly. Although the vid seems confident and convincing, various quad systems have been around for a long time.
The problem is that platforms are required, which is more than a big drawback. Additionally, I can’t imagine trying to train help to prune to these sophisticated nuances.
Open center training has evolved over a couple centuries because it works so well with peaches. I’m for sure not against new training methods, but so far, they seem to be trendy stuff which researchers can fill presentations, without real life application in most field conditions.
People forget where we came from, and why we changed to where we’re at. Years ago CO had workers on stilts to work peach trees. No one would consider that now.
Having peach trees at pedestrian level has so many advantages, regardless of the occasional trendy videos put out.
See 1:17
Apples are different. They take forever to bear on standard roots, or even on semi dwarf. The new high density planting and training systems have merit for commercial growers. The dynamics are very different than peaches, even though some researchers try to force similarities.
Since I’m getting old, I’m not adding anything. In fact we are working to “rightsize” everything.
Probably remove 1/2 row of Rich May (8 trees), 1/2 row of Ruby Prince and 1/2 row of Fire Prince. Need to get reduce the amount of labor required and only keep the stuff that makes money without a lot of effort! The early and late peaches are not as reliable as the mid season peaches and I hate to waste time pruning stuff that I can not count on to produce quality fruit.
Ok, makes sense. I guess the bloobs and blackberries are a lot less labor intensive and return more of a profit, especially compared to tree fruits.
As far as the blackberries are concerned, have you totally changed over to thornless upright varieties now? Are you growing any primocane varieties? I bet fighting those thorns on a big scale wasn’t pleasant.
My wife likes to pick the wild thorny ones around here, and always gets a good scratching by them. I think once our new thornless, better tasting berries start producing, she won’t mind the wild ones getting mowed down.
