Heading the lateral branches back while dormant would help too.
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Tree looks severely overloaded to me. Itās hard to do but I would thin again I know a couple of years that I let mine get too overloaded. I suffered the next year with small peaches
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You have a nice problem, wish I had more peaches.
What I am seeing with peaches is a pruning style that prohibits long thin branches by selective pruning and heading cuts. I will admit I am a rookie on peach trees. I was at an orchard last weekend and they had very well trained trees and thinned properly. I think you want to head trees back in the summer keeping branches stiff and short around 18ā using and open center style creating a donut so to speak of leaves and branches around the open center letting a lot of light in.
They branched their trees at 2ā and had 3-6 scaffolds that branched out. Iām trying the same but branching up around 4ā to avoid deer pressue.
Their trees were stout, and only about 8ā tall and on 12-15ā centers. Heavily pruned.
Iām doing my summer pruning as from what Iāve researched you want to avoid pruning peaches prior to cold weather when dormant. Zone 5 here. So any additional pruning I try to do when they are flowering or have swollen flower buds. This year a lot of my flowers died and I didnāt get as good of a pruning as I wanted a few peaches wherever I could get them from the sporadic blooms I had.
The summer and bloom time pruning also thins the peaches a lot easier than by hand later. The professional growers may have a different schedule than us small timers. Shortening those branches with lots of flowers removes a lot of fruit.
Again, Iām a rookie at peaches. I made my living growing shade and ornamental trees for 42 years. The pruning and growing styles are completely different from fruit trees, so I have had to research to change my style of pruning and growing drastically. With shade trees we did tons of heading cuts year round and poured nitrogen to them (250#/acre in split applications) as we made money the faster we could get them to market.
Those are my thoughts. Maybe the peach guys can tell you better. Iām still trying to figure it out. Iāve got about 50 peaches coming on about 10 older trees due to late freeze. So I donāt have your problem. I just hope I can keep the critters at bay so I can enjoy them.
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I agree with the folks that think you should thin more, but I think the tree shape is the real problem. Iāve read recommendations that say one peach every 4"-8" of branch.
I think your main scaffold branches should have been headed back (and maybe you can still do that). The vase shaped trees in fancy places have scaffolds and branches which are bench cut (pruned to an outward facing bud or shoot) every 2 to 3 feet. Yours kind of look like 3-4 leaders with branches coming off them. I put some videos below which hopefully illustrate what Iām talking about.
You can really take off a lot of a peach tree and itāll grow back assuming it started in reasonable health. I took off scary amounts of three mature peach trees I have and was sure Iād killed them but they look all bushy and happy now.
Here is one of my favorite videos about peach tree pruning. @Olpea made it and you have to ignore the parts where he says the video is bad! Itās one of my favorites! He shows scaffold selection and then cuts each scaffold and any branches way back to an outward facing branch. It looks like he leaves less than 2-3 feet (more like 1.5 feet):
@JAF Along with the video above I really like the two NC state ones below- just in case you havenāt seen them yet or @Olpeaās Iām tagging you. There is one more NC state video, āyoung peach treeā, but I found that one pretty confusing. I ended up just letting mine grow 1st summer and then selecting scaffolds and shaping second summer like the video above.
two-year old peach tree:
mature peach tree:
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I watched plenty of pruning videos and I have been doing an annual pruning. Thatās the best video Iāve seen. I wasnāt taking enough of the vertical branching off in particular on one of my peach trees and it is suffering
Thanks
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low down, hoping no creatures notice. reliance. i would have thinned more but we like them a bit on the small side
spring snow on some root stock took really well. will like earlier peaches next year!
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Neighbors totally untended, big box peach tree. Itās no longer clean as I said before. Now, it looks covered in peach scab. Amazing the squirrels and raccoons have largely left it alone
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Weāve had so much rain here, weāve had to go through many trees twice already. A ridiculous amount of growth. Some peach trees we didnāt get thinned enough, even though overall it was a light crop. But the ones we didnāt thin enough are punishing us with small fruit size.
Itās been a weird season here with lots of cultivars a bit out of order. Some trees nature thinned heavily have produced peaches which are gargantuan. One customer picked quite a few peaches which weighed 1.3 lbs+. We weighed individually about 8 which were each in excess of 1.3 lbs. The young couple seemed happy to have found such big peaches. Some others cropped too heavily produced peaches about .25 lbs. I knew those few were too heavy laden, but I was dumb and didnāt appropriate precious time to get them thinned more. Thankfully it wasnāt many.
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We are picking peaches from the seedling, my mother in lawās (unknown) and a contender. I stopped posting updates and pictures because I dont want to appear as if Iām bragging. Like Olpea we are picking some whoppers, lots of rain makes huge peachesā¦ itās been a wacky season.
My neighbor let his lawn get away from him. Broke a belt and put on new blades but still had to mow with 2 mowers. One set all the way up and the other at desired height. I helped him with the belt and blades and would have helped him with mowing but my wife was mowing ours at the time. Keeping mowers going during this massive growth is proving challenging.
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Looks like clean fruit could be obtained with a light spray schedule. See how the fruit progresses and if brown rot sets in.
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B
Braggart!!! 
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I have to spray my peaches. Once brown rot sets here here on my peaches it makes the quality pretty poor. Even visually they look pretty bad.
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The last couple weeks the lawn has really gotten away from me too! And the weeds around my peach trees!
Also, please post bragging pics! I look forward to seeing everyoneās harvest even if I donāt have any peaches this year (thanks a lot April 22nd freeze).
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Who needs a chuckle tonight? I know I needed to see this. My neighbors peach tree now
For the record, I tried to connect with them last 2 years to talk about growing this tree. I might not have a lot of experience, but I am over-read. They keep hiring someone to āhelpāā¦
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Why the net? I thought it had scab?
Are they trying to help it sail away? The netting is probably too porous for that.
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I feel your pain/frustration. We had three freezes/frosts right at the exact time all my peach trees were in full bloom. Zero peaches here either. 
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Exactly, why the partial net. I have near endless questions and comments
@evilpaul it does look like a sail!
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That is reallyā¦ interesting. Please keep going by their house and keep us updated!
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