I had a volunteer peach sapling show up last year, which I potted with the idea of growing it and ideally keeping it potted until finding a better forever home for it. I dug a hole to place said pot into over winter. It’s pretty much stayed there until today. I went to move the pot to mow, and felt resistance. One mighty tug later, I see a tap root holding on for dear life before giving way. There’s still a good foot of tap root under the pot, but the plant is definitely in shock, at minimum.
What should I do now?? Bigger pot? Commit to planting it, even this late in the season? What have I done?!
Pruning back is the right call. Peaches bounce back from root stress better than most stone fruit in my experience, just takes a few weeks for it to stop sulking. Keep it well watered and out of full sun while it recovers.
Pruning back is not supported by modern research and I’m surprised it is still, after all these years, the go-to for most gardeners when transplanting trees. Carl Whitcomb did a lot of research on the subject and when he revealed the results a half century ago, it did create a bit of an uproar in the hort community, but his research is now not only widely accepted but has been expanded on with the discovery that the branch tips create hormones that stimulate rapid root growth. This is from this…SS-ORH-03/MG089: Dispelling Misperceptions About Trees
Trees should not be pruned at transplanting to compensate for root loss.
Pruning the shoots and branches to compensate for root loss on field-grown trees is not recommended. The signal initiating root regeneration originates in the shoot tips. Pruning removes shoot tips and therefore reduces root regeneration. Begin corrective pruning 1 year after planting.
I suggest you sacrifice the pot and maintain as much of the root as possible and only remove damaged wood at transplanting time. But don’t remove the so called tap (actually escape) root even if it is partially broken, that is the root that has probably best served your tree.
Go to the link for a very nice summation of the current state of the science in managing landscape trees.
The only thing that shades a bit of doubt on this for me is that most of the research if not all has been on immature trees. Peaches reach maturity almost instantly and that means that the wood serves fruit from the point of first growth- you don’t want a recent transplant putting energy into fruit productioin because the pecking order for energy allotment favors fruit, and you want to make root growth the top priority for an establishing transplant.
However, if you don’t remove flowers or fruit at the first stages of new growth, a peach tree might establish more quickly if it is pruned back- I will now check the research to see if this has been resolved.
I checked whether any followup research has been done with mature trees and it hasn’t. I brought up the point with Whitcomb decades ago in a phone conversation and he barely responded (he may have been in a hurry). I strongly recommend that if you follow research guidelines and limit pruning of a transplanted tree that you remove flowers or fruit shortly after first growth.
Peach trees can turn into complete beasts depending on what variety and soil. Plan wisely.
I have a peach tree that is just 5 years old that is 15’ tall and 20’ wide already. Peaches love the upper Piedmont of GA, SC, NC.
Whether to prune are not to prune depends on many factors. Fall transplanting should involve less risk unless you’re in a drought. There are no hard and fast rules, just conditions that are highly variable depending on the weather and location.
I would put it in the ground. Unless you have a dwarf peach, I doubt potting it is a good idea.
I suspect 95% of the time members here transplant trees they have access to irrigation water. I suspect that whether the transplanted tree is stressed by drought previous to transplant depends more on the caretaker’s use of irrigation than the weather in most instances.
In my nursery the majority of transplanting of bearing age trees is done in the fall months. I think there’s a little advantage to this timing than doing it in early spring (before first growth), but the difference doesn’t seem very substantial as a general rule. I’m a dry farmer, and yet dry years and wet years, even dry late summers into fall haven’t been a noticeable liability in tree survival. However, by the time I dig in late Oct into Dec the soil has always been moist over the decades. I am not in a very drought prone area.
I agree that results may vary to some degree from region to region, soil to soil, and season to season.
The benefit of Fall planting takes place in June-July the following year in NC when the rates of evaporation skyrocket. The rate of evaporation in NC at 100 degrees is twice that of 90 degrees.