FWIW, I started training my young Oregon Curl Free purchased this spring in a 7" pot. I think it’s working out pretty well IMO. I am in Portland, OR.
Mid-May after transplanted into a 10g pot.
Mid-July
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The tree pictured in the pot is too young to see fruit buds. The wood is too immature. By September you might have a few fruit buds. It will probably be 2025 before you can expect fruit.
My trees are so tightly spaced and my growing season is so long that I need to go for fruit asap. Some fruit will slow them down a bit. But peaches have to be very dry to stop growing in summer. Apricots and pluots are more likely to stop growing. Apples stop at the first sign of water deficit.
So, inspired by this thread I went and hacked off a bunch of growth on my Oregon Curlfree. I realized I forgot to take a before photo, but this is after I removed at least 40% of the biomass and it’s probably still way too crowded:
Because this is planted at the base of that stone wall, I’m still encouraging some vertical growth, since it’s barely more than a waist-height bush from the perspective of the upper level, and that’s really the side I’m mostly wanting to access the tree from to harvest:
I’m sure I’ve made some rookie mistakes already, but I assume nothing that can’t be fixed later with the help of all these more experienced peach growers.
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Looking good! On mine I also cutback on the branches and the plant created multiple laterals within a week. Also did you spray for PLC on this variety since you have planted it in the ground?
Thank you. How do you make them to goto fruit? when you say your growing season is long you extend your season by growing them inside the green house?
No. It got a small bit of curl this spring (6 leaves or so) and grew out of it quickly. I posted photos here, this was about as bad as it got:
A moderate growth rate probably helps fruit bud set. That’s the case with many fruits. Excessive vigor may reduce fruit bud formation. Young trees are excessively vigorous compared to mature trees. The young tree is focusing on growth to fill out it’s space. An older tree with less vigor sets fruit buds readily.
The young tree may grow 6-10ft. In an older peach tree 12-18 inches of new growth is recommended.
The growing season in my greenhouse is 10.5 months. 1.5 months of chilling and 10.5 with highs of 80-100F.
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thats good, I hope the tree will keep up to its name 
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Thank you for your replies and posting those videos again. They are worth re-watching. It would be great to see him do a summer pruning video. Based on your advice and our proximity, I do not prune in the winter any more either. I wait until after the last frost/freeze to see what fruit I will have (also based on your recommendations). Thank you for those tips. I don’t have a lot of peaches this year, but I would have a lot less if I had pruned before the last freeze.
Your before and after pictures look quite similar to mine. It’s reassuring to see how much biomass you remove.
I wasn’t sure about choosing a new scaffold a year (or more) later than the original ones were selected. You get quite an unbalanced set of scaffolds, in terms of diameter of the scaffold I mean. But I guess with as fast as peach trees grow, it evens out soon enough.
It would be good to have a few training videos on choosing scaffolds and primary branches on scaffolds, while taking into account collar formation, location and attachment as you mentioned. I have not paid enough attention to this at times, and find weak points of attachment on those primary branches that should have been removed when they were young, It also seems to be very common for most of my varieties to form “Y"s along the scaffolds. I would rather remove one when they are still very small, but have had to cut out some fairly sizeable ones (1”-2") that I hadn’t noticed or maybe didn’t I realize they would become a problem as they grew bigger.
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Dr Mike was here a few years ago and showed me the summer pruning technique suggested for our area (central NC). I’m sure the technique changes from location to location. The technique he demonstrated is often used by commercial growers with a short supply of time during a busy season.
He simply snaps off new growth growing toward the center of the tree, especially new growth at the top of the tree that will shade the fruit. He did not use shears, just gloves. He quickly pulls the new undesired growth horizontally and it snaps off easily… Entire process took less that 2 minutes. He removed what looked like a bushel or two of new succulent growth. The undesired growth was thrown on the ground and he moved to the next tree. Next, next, next. He prunes very quickly and it really helps to stop and repeat portions of his video.
I have seen some pictures of commercial peach orchards in other areas that wait until the trees are blooming before they complete dormant pruning so I asked about it. Seems to be a popular idea at Penn State for peaches in their area but he did not like that process for my area.
Only 4 video in his series on Peaches as far as I know.
Edit: The formation of “Y” on scaffolds iis discussed in his last video. Folks from other area in this forum do not recommend it but all of my trees have forks on the main scaffolds and look a lot like the trees in the video.
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your trees look lovely. The fruiting moving up in the canopy is something you have trained for a specific reason?
You ask a good question. The fruiting zone has moved up the tree as the trees have grown
We had to cut the height of some of the trees a few years ago with pole mounted chain saws but we normally just use loppers
Also noticed that the low hanging fruit is more susceptible to frost than fruit higher in the tree.
Hard to tell from the picture but we pick almost all the fruit from the ground with no ladders.
Target is 3 bushels per tree in a year with little frost damage.
We found we can produce excellent sweet fruit of the proper size by thinning a lot less than suggested. We could get larger fruit with more thinning but we have found that fruit too large is hard to pack in 1/2 peck bags. Also we do not head most of the fruiting wood like Dr Mike shows in his video. The excess fruit load causes these branches to invert downwards. You can see some of that in the picture
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I’d say that your tree is much more open than almost any mature peach I’ve ever seen. So that allows a heavier fruit load on what is there. All the leaves and fruit are very well illuminated.
You must get some vigorous upright growth on a tree like that. Either that or your tree is lower than normal vigor. Alan and Mark talk like they are always fighting vigorous upright growth.
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That may not be a good example since the picture was taken during a year when we used no fertilizer and reduced irrigation to try to reduce the growth which was out of control. That tree is Rich May which is a vigorous tree here.
My soil is very different from the sandy soil at the research farm where the pruning videos were recorded. I got into trouble by over stimulating my trees using their recommendations and I had to cut back to regain control when the trees wanted to grow to the moon.
They use micro sprinklers and high levels of N on their trees.
About 1/2 pound of 17/17/17 per tree is all the fertilizer I need.
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Thank you @blueberryhill. Your peach trees look really nice and open.
I rewatched the videos… I usually watch them 1 or 2x a year for a refresher, so I am glad you and Mark posted them again.
I think I was getting hung up on dormant vs summer pruning, and wasn’t sure that the same techniques would apply (such as heading cuts at the ends of the fruiting wood). When you cut back the fruiting wood by 1/3 as he suggests during the dormant season, this is to stiffen the limb and reduce fruit load. I think he also mentioned it will stimulate new growth/branching, but I need to go back and listen to that again.
Since I am almost exclusively pruning during summer, none of that fruiting wood he is talking about gets pruned back before fruiting. Some of my trees have been pruned after I have harvested the fruit, while there are others that will be pruned before the fruit is harvested. Not sure that really makes a difference, other than in a marginal year like this one, I was able to keep some peaches that would have otherwise been pruned out.
I will try take a few pictures of the scaffolds that “Y” that concern me. I think it might be more appropriate to say they form a “V”, rather than a “Y”. They tend to have very narrow crotch angles which look weak, since half of the “V” does not form a good collar.
Went out to look for some of those scaffolds that V at the end I couldn’t find the ones I was looking for. I did find several that have multiple shoots at the end, 3 to 5, that I have neglected to prune.
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[quote=“Olpea, post:38, topic:1304”]
Eventually I just started selecting 3 scaffolds.
So I’ve had it drilled into my head since I took commercial tree fruit production in college (I graduated in '07 so I’m going back a few years) that peaches are pruned to six scaffolds with an open center…
I know I mentioned somewhere my tree fruit production ‘professor’ in college was a cooperative extension agent with a master’s degree in Weed Science (the other kind of weed, the stuff herbicides are made for) who only had a handful of years of working experience in an orchard when he was in high school/college…
I worked at DelVal’s orchard for a year (I went to college at what was then Delaware Valley College)…as one of my classmates put it the lack of supervision was an education. I spent a decent amount of time pruning…yeah, not explaining how to pick scaffolds on the trees we were working on was part of the lack of supervision.
I’ve worked on a couple commercial orchards since then…the best instruction I’ve gotten on training fruit trees by way of pruning-or any manner…has been from a combination of touching base with a large grower I used to work for (the way that grower’s pruned has changed over the years) and the grower’s convention I go to every year…and they’ve gone through every training system and planting density under the sun at the grower’s convention…6 scaffolds open center, 4 scaffolds open center, 4 scaffolds trained to a V, 2 scaffolds spaced 7 feet between trees trained to a V…I know I’ve seen research presented about spacing peach trees tighter than 7 feet between trees but I remember hearing payoff in spacing reaches it’s limits right around 7 feet
3 bushels per year.
So the original density I was spacing my trees at was 12 feet between trees and 15 feet between rows.
Over the last 3 years I’ve been planting 10 by 15.
The first spacing is 242 trees per acre and the second is 290 trees per acre.
If I get 3 saleable bushels per tree out of either density in a good year, I’d be very pleased.
@Olpea
After watching your video for the 3rd time and Dr. Mike 4th time? (over the past couple of years), I felt like it’s past time that I seriously reduced the height of my Freckle Face (4th year in ground) and shaped another 3 rd year old peach tree.
With pruner and a loper in hand, I hacked both trees down and remove at least 50% of the mass. Yes, I should have done it in the spring or, better, 2-3 years ago but it is what it is.
@KSprairie My FreckleFace looked similar to yours tree. I just had enough of mine growing out of control. It’s done now.
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good for you @mamuang . glad you got it pruned into shape. I am working my through mine. I have about 13 left to do! Not enough daylight, or too much work away from home, and I’m struggling to get it done.
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