When I first planted the stone fruits my thought was I have the space lets let them get big. Years later and a massive learning curve in east coast growing. I now know that’s not going to happen here. Now I have about 50 stone fruits between 10 and 20 feet. Here’s the question. I now want to keep them at 10-12 feet for easier care. I was just going to put a 10 foot stick in the tree and whack everything above it. Is that about right or should it be done in stages or something else. Some of the branches are pretty good size. Thanks
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I have kept my trees in the 8 foot high range because I like not needing a ladder to do anything. Each year the canopy just gets a little wider. They grow a couple of feet taller each summer and I trim them back each spring with some branch removal in the summer as well. It’s pretty easy for me since I have had this strategy from the beginning.
You have a bigger chore with your initial pruning to reduce height. I would think you might want to avoid the trim every branch to 10 foot approach, in favor of a more selective approach. You probably have some larger branches with side branches on them, giving you the opportunity to trim the main branch back lower than the side branches. Also, being more selective in what you remove can give you the opportunity to let more light and air flow into the tree.
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@SpokanePeach So basically doing the reduction in more than one year? Targeting the more upright branches first? I was a little sketchy about doing all the cuts at once. Some of the branches are several inches thick. Is 8 foot high enough that the fruit will not pull down into deer range?
I know it will take some time but, a friend of mine has a peach tree that looks like a board on a post. A 15 foot wide perfectly flat canopy about a foot thick. Really beautiful and what I would like to try.
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I have a distinct advantage in that the deer are completely fenced out, so I don’t have a height I have to stay above. My canopies are from about 3 or 4 foot at the bottom up to 8 or 10 at the top. Sounds like you might prefer to be a little taller. No hard rules for this, but iterating your way there over time might be a good plan. Probably the most important part is to start and see where the process takes you.
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No deer? That must be nice. Your right. Really no way to screw up. Just about learning from the experience. I have a lot of them, maybe I will try a couple different things and see what works best. Thanks for advice.
Good luck!
I can’t speak about the appropriate height to avoid deer, but in terms of reducing tree height by nearly 50% (20ft to 10ft), you will need to do this over 2-3 years. I’m sure the tree can still survive if you do it within one dormant season, but you’ll likely lose fruiting for awhile.
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As mentioned by Spokane and Martin, it’s best to prune them back slowly. By pruning everything at one height, you would likely just get new sprouts right at the stub cuts.
Definitely remove the the upright branches first, as they tend to be the most vigorous. But also look for other tall branches to remove. As you open the tree up more, more light will penetrate lower, causing more shoots to emerge lower down (not so much with peaches however). There is a member here who makes part of his living by reworking old large trees to a manageable height.
However, if your stone fruit involves peaches or nectarines, this can be extremely difficult.
I sometimes offer an analogy to people who ask me how to train their backyard peach tree they’ve never pruned. To wit:
Peach trees are like children. To hope for them to turn out well, one must start training early. One can’t take a teenager, who has been unloved and unparented from birth, who has been allowed to lie, cheat and steal, without any check, then expect to easily transform that teenager into a loving, empathetic, and trustworthy individual. It’s too late.
It’s pretty much like that with peach trees once they reach a certain age. It’s easier just to plant a new tree. Older, unpruned peach trees can be brought down to a manageable height, but they will never be the productive tree they could have been had the pruning begun early.
Of course the close analogy between plants and children is not my own idea. I once read a quote from Samuel Taylor Coleridge I’ve never forgotten:
"Thelwall thought it very unfair to influence a child’s mind by inculcating any opinions before it had come to years of discretion to choose for itself. I showed him my garden, and told him it was my botanical garden. “How so?” said he; “it is covered with weeds.” “Oh,” I replied, that is only because it has not yet come to its age of discretion and choice. The weeds, you see, have taken the liberty to grow, and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice the soil towards roses and strawberries.”
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Check out this UC Davis publication on pruning overgrown fruit trees, it might help:
http://homeorchard.ucdavis.edu/8058.pdf
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@Olpea Thank you for the detailed help. Apricots with their thin sticks reaching for the sky. Thinking I can get away with just lopping to 10 feet. Your right on the peaches. They grew the fastest and are the biggest. Here on the east coast stone fruits make you work. Your right maybe removing a couple less tasty ones in favor of an easier fruit is a good idea. I love stone fruits. Might be hard to put the saw at ground level.
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That’s not bad. It actually goes into detail what olpea was describing with peaches. Thanks.
The problem with peaches is they are reluctant to send out new shoots from old wood, this is what makes them very difficult to redo old mistakes. I agree with everything Olpea says, but for the home grower sometimes a peach tree that produces half of what it could in its space is just fine.
Stub cuts won’t work if there are no growing shoots right behind. You have to prune to serve your lowest existing shoots and that’s the best you can do. It’s mostly a matter of thinning entire branches that are shading lower branches that still have vital wood with shoots underneath.
I don’t do shield grafts or any kind of bark grafts in old wood, but there may be a way to employ them to get new low wood closer to trunks with peach trees. Otherwise old trees tend to have a lot of unproductive area in the center of the trees. That’s when they are replaced in commercial orchards.
Some peach varieties are much more prone to produce new shoots from old wood than others. Madison and Redhaven, for example. I think maybe old fashioned varieties are more prone to this- maybe because they were developed before synthetic nitrogen became available, which speeds up the development of new trees into productive ones. In the old days, growers may have had to wait more than 3 years to get a whip into productivity and so may have been more reluctant to give up on old trees.
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The trees are different ages but, all are less than seven years old. They just grew really fast. You don’t think they will throw branches from the cuts? Is it like opea was saying. Some of the larger ones would be easier to replace than to reshape? Let me know. I was already considering reducing their numbers anyway.
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I’ve successfully resized overgrown peach trees, but my climate is different than yours. My most successful projects took about 3 years to complete. And strangely, they tend to send up new shoots along the remaining old wood when I prune during mid summer rather than mid winter. I rarely get new shoots when I reduce height during winter.
However if you plan to do the entire height control pruning in one season, your tree will more likely survive if you do this during winter rather than summer from my experience.
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A while back I had watched a bunch of college pruning videos. Almost every one of them were pruning when the tree was flowering or later with leaves. Their reason was that the plant was most active then. Making it faster to heal and throw new shoots. On stones not pomes. Which pretty much goes right along with what your saying. As much as I would like to do it all at once I will be doing it in stages as all suggest. Most I have trained as three main branches forked with an open center. I will just target one of the three per year. Also, totally removing a couple.
Thanks to all who responded. Your advice will be put to use very soon.
Instead of fully removing the trees, maybe cut the whole canopy completely and graft new varieties to the stump.
Peaches and Japanese plums tend to grow vigorously from spring through summer. Pomes and E. plums get most of their surge in spring. However, I’m unable to say for sure how much of this is the result in my region of leafhoppers, psyla and other pests that concentrate on the slower growers.
I used to think it was all based on a genetic tendency of either determinate or indeterminate growth like tomatoes. I still believe that for peaches, you don’t have to worry about slowing growth by pruning them later as you do for apples or pears, when you are establishing size as quickly as possible.
For established pomes, it may be an advantage with vigorous trees to prune them later- partially because you can see the flower buds, but for them it is also said to reduce vegetative vigor.
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I was considering doing that on one. Have never grafted before but, your right it is a good time to practice. I have close to 50 stone fruit trees and @olpea was right. Some of them would be easier to start with a fresh tree than trying to reshape it.
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@alan I suspect the septic drain field has something to do with the amazing growth that I seem to get. The peaches aren’t actually in it but, close. Most of my trees are standard size and many of them have not flowered yet even though they are monsters. If I start whacking on them will that delay or advance the flowering? Or should I leave them alone till they flower?
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I’ve never seen peach trees fail to blossom because they are excessively vigorous and I don’t even believe that’s possible for peaches or nects. I’ve seen trees send up 8’, well branched shoots of annual wood after seasons where frost killed the flower buds and the trees don’t lose their ability to fruit the following year. Peaches can usually produce fruit by their second year from whips, no matter how vigorously they are growing and the more vigorous the better.
I can only speak from my own experience, so what seems possible to me may be inaccurate, but I suspect something else is going on at your site, and I can’t think of what if your trees aren’t even blossoming.
The failure to bloom is part of what is leading to excessive vigor. Making peaches requires a great deal of a tree’s energy.
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