North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com>]

Jim, mulching with leaves annually is certainly a form of fertilization.
Surprisingly even straight wood chips will greatly increase N content of
soil over time, apparently by way of N fixing bacteria according to some
study I read about recently.  I've actually over-stimulated peaches by
annual mulching after several years of it, but this was mostly horse stable
waste.  If you're getting an adequate amount of 12 to 16 inch or longer
annual shoots the trees are plenty juiced.

Anton, I manage peach trees to get annual wood off of much older wood as
much as possible.  If I relied primarily on 2 year wood holding one year
wood it would be  harder to keep the trees from getting away from me.  Of
course, I have to be sure to have adequate fruiting wood one way or
another.  That Israeli method sounds completely insane.  I've found headed
peach trees often never come back but I've never tried heading them during
the growing season.