You are doing a much better job of getting surround to stick on your peach-lets than I. But mine are all over my head.
What do you use for peach leaf curl? And how was your control? I didn’t get much control at all with copper octanoate salts (Bonide Liquid Copper).
The only thing I’ve used this spring was Kocide 3000. The past 3 seasons (really only 2 since i didn’t spray at planting) i used NOTHING.
How much surround you using per gallon? I went with 3 cups per. Applied to run-off.
I did have 1 tree (White Lady) with 1 leaf with a problem. Though thinking back i believe i was at the end of the tank coming up to that side.
I’m using 2 cups/gallon of surround, but this is mostly for my apples and plums, which have a decent coating now. The peach gets whatever I’m using for them, since it is one tree.
I might have to get some Kocide or find a similar product in a smaller quantity. Or apply a spray closer to bud-break.
Ok, i think this should be just about my last round of thinning. I went through and hit my 5B and 9 pretty hard since they will be the first to ripen. Came away with this:
Anyone know the size i can expect from some of these peaches? I get that most of the supermarket fruit is usually abnormally large just for show/purchase. Everyone thinks bigger must be better. But should i be looking for half that size (smaller than a tennis ball)? Golf ball size? Etc.
Also @Olpea wondering if you could give an update on the trees you showed in the video. If you don’t have time to do another video i understand. Just interested to see where your trees are sitting in relation to mine. For me it’s like looking into the future. 
If you want the best peaches thin enough that they get good size. That will also give better quality fruit. Really small fruit is an indication that the tree was seriously under thinned. The small fruit probably won’t be very sweet. And golf ball size will be half seed, yuk.
Yep… I thought that’d be the case. In your eyes is a fruit every 6ish inches good?? or should I be looking for something more along the lines of 8-10?
It depends to a large extent which is more important to you, yield or quality? I thin plums on medium size limbs to greater than 6 inches. Peaches are twice as big so need twice the spacing.
It’s really about leaf to fruit ratio and how open the canopy is.
I should probably thin these 
I just went through all the peaches/nectarines and thinned…this thing needed it badly. Usually with these potted trees, they will thin them selves to some extent…but not this thing…
For me i want a little of both. I would love to have one of the best peaches I’ve ever eaten, but wouldn’t want it to be the only fruit on the tree of you catch my drift. My family (wife and son) are probably expecting to have a good supply of peaches/nectarines this whole summer off my BYOrchard (now changed to a total of 15 due to 3 trees being “found” again).
Each tree is smallish with the 2 problem ones being a little over 5 feet. They also aren’t full trees as each one only gets 1/4 of the space of a single tree. I purposely decided on this due to the feast or famine ordeal of having 1-2 trees. Going off of my best guess since i haven’t spent the time to count I’d say my highest count is my PF35 at probably more than 20-30 fruit. With everything else dropping off to around 15-20. Some of my small setters (2nd leaf nectarines and Indian Free) only having 10 at the most. Does this seem like a lot to you?
I also opened up most of the trees while i did some thinning. This was able to get light on most, if not all, the interior and in some cases thinned around 10-15 fruit from just removing a few branches. I take it with the nature of peaches more light means better fruit. Question i have is what happens to the areas with fruit that gets somewhat shaded? Does the fruit not ripen? Does it stay small? Etc.
Nice one Rob. What tree is that?
With plums esp, I count on the curcs to do a lot of the thinning
That is i believe a white flesh peach===Raritan Rose…
Last year they didn’t size up very well and i’m thinking i know why (thinning)
Very easy to grow, they look perfect usually…probably one of my most successful container grow fruits…i’ve had this fruiting now for quite some time. I did hack it back some last year to get some new/lower wood…
The curcs would thin every fruit this year at my location. The curc numbers are way up there from last year. They would attack a pool ball I think if it was outside.
Ok. I may have misjudged things just a tad. Took a look at my more open trees, the 2 that have the issues (5B and 24-007) and it appears that the heart night have gotten to me on Sunday… or i do a horrible job estimating. I counted up to 70 on just the 5B before i last count of what branch i was on.
But for the most part they are about 6 inches apart. Now from what I’ve read thinning is part removing the fruit so the tree doesn’t over set and self destruct (break branches, etc), part getting the good air movement to help lessen the chance of rot, mildew, etc, but also the tree only has so much energy to put into fruit production.
Am i correct on those aspects? If that is the case then how does one really know how much the tree can support? I take it the every 6 inches is a rule of thumb for a normal size tree. A tree 8-10 ft tall should be able to support “X” number of fruit so that equates to every 6 or so inches, etc. But with my case and the tree being only about 5 ft and 1/4th the size of the full tree can it support that much?
Maybe I’m reading to much into this and asking dumb questions. Maybe things just aren’t making the light bulb go of in my head. I’m not sure but with every year these trees aren’t guaranteed to produce for me so i need to maximize what i can from them.
Here are a few pictures of the size i got as of this afternoon. For a peach coming due in about 6-7 weeks (so they say) am i on track? Or will i be looking at ripe golf balls come that date? Tom Spellman is a big proponent of thinning early ripening varieties ASAP to allow the fruit to size up. So i thought i may be on the right track, but I’m not sure.
And with branches that only set 2 fruit should i go and remove one? Or could that branch possibly support only those 2?
I ripens and sizes up pretty normally but sugars may be reduced.
On your small trees if you’ve taken off enough that the tree can support the fruit you should be OK. A small tree generally has better light in the interior than a big tree.
Very much not dumb questions. They are more, questions everyone has at the beginning but there don’t seem to be particular hard and fast satisfying answers because there’s a lot of variables and you tend to quickly outgrow the phase where you’re worried about the answers to these questions. The general answer I found, and absolutely haven’t been able to verify with any level of confidence, is that an “excellent” fruit needs somewhere around 30 to 40 leaves to sugar up properly, and those leaves need (maybe only, “should be”) to be down branch from the fruit. With very small trees and ideal forms (perfectly open center in the middle of a field, or espaliared) you can get away with 15 to 20 perfectly exposed leaves per fruit.
You’ve got a small tree with a wide open center, so I’d think you can skew toward heavier setting. I’d still, personally and JUST from advice from these guys, would thin to one peach per foot of new growth feeding them.
Sean,
I’ll try to give you pic today of a PF5B or a PF9-007.
Lots of good advice here. I think MisterGuy mentioned a good point. What you are really looking for is the amount of leaves per fruit. All the spacing we are all talking about is really shorthand for leaves per fruit. It’s the leaves which convert sunlight and CO2 to carbohydrates, which equate to size and sugar (I’m leaving water out of the equation because for high quality fruit, water is a negative.)
I don’t see a lot of leaves on your trees, which may mean you need to thin more aggressively if your goal is to get sweet fruit.
One thing I’ve noticed on peach trees with good vigor is that the early varieties are most likely to penalize you for under thinning. They are the most likely to give junky golf ball size fruits if underthinned. This isn’t universally true, but more likely. Your PF5 and PF9 are earlier varieties, so that’s important to keep in mind.
Yeah… Unfortunately one of my trees with this “issue” I’ve been dealing with is my 5B. The other being a 24-007. My 9-007 has zero issues with generating new growth, but seemed this year to have an issue setting fruit. I counted probably around 15-20 fruit total on the whole tree with some that SHOULD be thinned.
So as you can tell from the pics this is the issue that I have. Would you even consider it an issue, or have some trees in your experience just “been that way”?
Sean,
If by issue, you mean lack of foliage, I would consider that an issue. I know I sound like a broken record, but about the only time I’ve seen that an issue is when there is too much water on the roots, or some type of other anaerobic condition.
I’ve got some trees right now I recall planting pretty deep in shallow portions of terraces which have very wet aisles, and these trees don’t have a lot of foliage.
Whatever the cause, it’s not normal to have low vigor peaches, or peach shoots without foliage. And it definitely hurts yield and quality.
