I will get a (recent no leaf) photo of this tree later today but i took this pic the day i noticed a bear came through, ate the peaches and broke the tree last spring. It does not have good balance as far as trying to make it open center. Do you believe i could cut this off 3 ft from the ground and it would send a bud from the variety and not it’s rootstock.
Rootstock unknown, it is a Majestic Peach. Its been in the ground (this spring is its 3rs leaf) at my home.
I can’t tell where the graft is, but it looks like you have plenty of shoots growing below 3’. A tree that small will generally send some adventious shoots out, especially if you can charge up the vigor and it’s receiving sunlight.
It might be a bit of a problem for that tree. From what’s left of the tree I see, the tree doesn’t look very vigorous. You might try adding some fertilizer. The ground doesn’t look like it’s supporting much vegetation (in the background)?
Yes my wifes chickens & ducks don’t let the grass or anything grow to much. I acutally just frost seeded clover & rye in theire 2 days ago before the snow went away, though I don’t expect much to make it.
The tree hasn’t been overly vigorous at all, I water it every few days and hit it with 12s fertilizer normally. Maybe I should do heaving nitrogen for more green growth.
I would throw some mulch down to help keep the ground from frying in the sun.
I don’t know what 12s fertilizer is. I just noticed from the pic there seemed to be a lot of runt shoots (with close internodes) for a tree that sized.
I use pure N for fertilizer, but I have a pretty balanced soil (from previous fertilizer applications) and also apply wood chips. Generally speaking, it’s pretty easy to get a vigor response from N fertilizer, so as a general rule I would advise it if a peach tree doesn’t show good growth.
I wouldn’t advise watering it every few days. Unless you are in an extremely dry climate and you soil is extremely sandy, peaches don’t need much water at all. Once the soil settles around a newly planted peach tree (generally from rain, unless it’s been unusually dry, in which case I might give it 5 gal. water) that tree never sees another drop of supplemental water for the rest of its life. In other words, the most I water a peach tree is 5 gal. for the life of the tree. We get about 38-40 inches of rain annually.
Too much water can and will slow or even kill a peach tree. It kills the the fine root hairs which absorb water/nutrients. Interestingly a peach tree with too much water can behave a lot like one with not enough.
Some really great info @Olpea, I don’t have much experience with Peach Trees at all so this is actually quite helpful. I’m considering just ripping this tree out of the ground & saying bon voyage.
Thanks for the nice feedback, but I wouldn’t pull the tree. I bet you can get that thing moving in the right direction, and give you some good food.
Just work to improve some vigor right now. In my experience, vigor covers LOTS of mistakes on peach trees.
