North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Anton Callaway <marillen@earthlink.net>]

I basically agree with Alan.  One minor clarification is that the stimulation 
of growth by summer pruning near harvest works OK for early ripening 
cultivars, but not as well for the late-ripening cultivars.  Soft new growth 
stimulated too close to winter will encourage freeze damage & the tree won't 
have sufficient time to develop fruiting buds on the new growth.

Anton
Zone 8
North Carolina piedmont


-----Original Message-----
>From: Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com>
>Sent: Mar 27, 2011 3:39 PM
>To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
>Subject: [NAFEX] pruning peaches
>
>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.
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