North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com>]

Here's a few things I've learned about peach trees over the years- and I do
manage a lot of them.  First, when they talk about peach trees only lasting
10-15 years it's probably about commercial production where trees must be
compact and produce largest fruit possible.  I don't know what the limit is,
but I've certainly seen 50 year old trees and managed trees over 30.
Longevity depends on a lot of factors including cultivar, soil and other
management issues, including pruning.

The idea mentioned here as bizarre - that of removing all 2nd year wood
annually is actually quite common in commercial production.  The tree can be
a single trunk or a V or shaped as open center but once the permanent
scaffolds are set it's generally best to remove all, or as many as possible,
of the 2-year shoots and leave 1-years as replacements to keep the tree in
compact shape.  The largest highest quality peaches form towards the end of
12-18" shoots so less vigorous shoots should be removed if there are
adequate vigorous ones to hold your crop.

If you remove the largest suckers during the first month of growth and then
do some summer pruning about a month before harvest of each variety, you can
help the tree regenerate new wood from the trees frame so you won't need to
use 2 year pieces to carry your crop, which leads to a tree reaching further
and further up and out.

It is essential to provide adequate water and nutrients to maintain good
vigor for peaches and I suggest keeping trees mulched from competition with
5-6' rings beneath trees.

http://njaes.rutgers.edu/peach/orchard/bigpeaches.pdf      Here's something
that further explains part of what I've just written about.  They know a lot
about peaches at Rutgers.