Peach trees

[Belladonna]

Alright gardeners, I have a question about fruit trees. I have been thinning hundreds of peaches from my two fruiting peach trees. Why do they set the biggest fruit at the very tip of the branch where it would cause a breakage? The fruits grow on one year old growth and some of the branches can be 12 inches long and have 20 fruits on them. There's no way this can be good for the survival of the tree, can it?

I thinned them down to one or two fruits per branch, keeping one fruit close to the trunk and leaving one more about 4 inches away.

[Tactical Knightmare]

Because peach trees dont want you eating their shit.

What they want to do is produce as much fruit as possible that will lead to more peace trees. So tons of fruit on the end of a weak branch makes perfect sense. What are you doing with what you harvested so far? Canning?

I have a lemon tree with a single branch at the moment with almost 20 lemons on it.
Wish they were peaches.

[Belladonna]

Because peach trees dont want you eating their shit.

What they want to do is produce as much fruit as possible that will lead to more peace trees. So tons of fruit on the end of a weak branch makes perfect sense. What are you doing with what you harvested so far? Canning?

I have a lemon tree with a single branch at the moment with almost 20 lemons on it.
Wish they were peaches.

I had an amazing peach tree a few years ago but I planted it in the wrong place and had to prune it, which lead to blight. Anyway, I thinned it like mad and still had so many peaches that I canned enough for the year and then gave bushels away to my friend. She then passed some off to her mom.

The two trees that put on fruit this year are a canning peach of some kind (which now has blight ) and a Saturn peach which has the best peach flavor I have ever tasted.

My point earlier was that if the branch is overloaded it will cause a fruit drop before they are ripe or the branch will break before the fruit is ripe. Maybe the seeds can produce a tree even if the fruit isn't fully ripe so there would be more trees.

I don't recall having a fruit drop but one of the main branches on my first peach tree broke from my lack of experience with thinning.

This year I will be making canned peaches and jam with the canning fruit and eating/giving away some of the Saturn fruit. Finger crossed!

[Belladonna]

I have a lemon tree with a single branch at the moment with almost 20 lemons on it.
Wish they were peaches.

Is this a young tree, like a whip with 20 lemons? If so, you should only leave one or two at most. When I have a young tree I leave one or two fruits only so I can see what the fruit tastes like. In case you don't know, if you leave lots of fruit you will have smaller fruit and if you thin you will get bigger fruit.

[Woods Devil]

I love fresh peaches

[Tactical Knightmare]

I had an amazing peach tree a few years ago but I planted it in the wrong place and had to prune it, which lead to blight. Anyway, I thinned it like mad and still had so many peaches that I canned enough for the year and then gave bushels away to my friend. She then passed some off to her mom.

The two trees that put on fruit this year are a canning peach of some kind (which now has blight ) and a Saturn peach which has the best peach flavor I have ever tasted.

My point earlier was that if the branch is overloaded it will cause a fruit drop before they are ripe or the branch will break before the fruit is ripe. Maybe the seeds can produce a tree even if the fruit isn't fully ripe so there would be more trees.

I don't recall having a fruit drop but one of the main branches on my first peach tree broke from my lack of experience with thinning.

This year I will be making canned peaches and jam with the canning fruit and eating/giving away some of the Saturn fruit. Finger crossed!

Practice makes perfect, I am no pro thats for damn sure. I am just winging it myself right now. tbh
Lots of peaches, damn !

The lemon tree is older than me so it will have some really big lemons on it.
But this bundle is about the size of large limes.

I need to learn to can eventually. You can be my mentor.

[Belladonna]

I need to learn to can eventually. You can be my mentor.

I can help if you have questions, probably made every mistake you can possibly make. Old jars aren't supposed to be used, I use them. Tattlers aren't all they are cracked up to be. Foods last a long time in jars. Don't can melted butter, can ghee. I fed canned butter to my family after I watched a youtube vid that was poor instruction. Hamburger cans well. Venison is my favorite thing to can. Nothing beats throwing a bunch of things in a pie shell with some venison on a cold winter day.

[Tactical Knightmare]

[swampbilly]

I can help if you have questions, probably made every mistake you can possibly make. Old jars aren't supposed to be used, I use them. Tattlers aren't all they are cracked up to be. Foods last a long time in jars. Don't can melted butter, can ghee. I fed canned butter to my family after I watched a youtube vid that was poor instruction. Hamburger cans well. Venison is my favorite thing to can. Nothing beats throwing a bunch of things in a pie shell with some venison on a cold winter day.

bet ya ima made mo misteaks dan yew.......

[swampbilly]

Alright gardeners, I have a question about fruit trees. I have been thinning hundreds of peaches from my two fruiting peach trees. Why do they set the biggest fruit at the very tip of the branch where it would cause a breakage? The fruits grow on one year old growth and some of the branches can be 12 inches long and have 20 fruits on them. There's no way this can be good for the survival of the tree, can it?

I thinned them down to one or two fruits per branch, keeping one fruit close to the trunk and leaving one more about 4 inches away.

is this a grafted tree?

[Absolutely!]

Alright gardeners, I have a question about fruit trees. I have been thinning hundreds of peaches from my two fruiting peach trees. Why do they set the biggest fruit at the very tip of the branch where it would cause a breakage? The fruits grow on one year old growth and some of the branches can be 12 inches long and have 20 fruits on them. There's no way this can be good for the survival of the tree, can it?

I thinned them down to one or two fruits per branch, keeping one fruit close to the trunk and leaving one more about 4 inches away.

Every year you either entirely remove or, if they're in the right place and healthy, compact your new growth sometimes up to 2/3 of its original length. This causes stiffening and strengthening, making strong 1yr old wood that is flexible enough to bend when loaded, but strong enough to bear the weight. So your winter prune would involve shortening things down to a healthy bud on the outward side that will grow out and up. Don't be stingy with the pruning. Hard pruning makes for healthy trees.

It's very hard to find a good picture on the net for some reason. This is because it's a 3 d thing - and they try to show in 2 d. This is the best pic I could find and it's still VERY bad, because it shows vertically what should be happening horizontally. it's stylised.



You see those straight lines? They are wooden chocks inserted to space the branches out to give air, and breathing room.

If you imagine a group of dead animal rib cages all tied together - or boat skeletons. or roof rafters on a mediaeval roof - that is what you are doing to each branch. That's what you want a bunch of in your winter prune. I always think of a winter prune as an elephant graveyard. The first thing you do is look at what boughs you want to keep. You want to rotate the older ones and bring in new whips which you allow to grow without pinching the tip (stiffens them) to replace the old boughs.

So you would remove your chosen older bough - if that's what you want to do with this tree this year, and paint it off.

The second thing you do is work out what you want to lead each bough. By lead, I mean be kept vertically the highest. If you have systematically done this over the years it should be clear to see. But you might want to change one. That is where you are directing green vigour so that it can grow like crazy there, and you can compact it back again next winter and keep the tree under some level of control.

So now: you will have 2 shapes of tree. Either a central leader, or a vase. If a vase, every single leader should end up the same height after pruning. Find your shortest one, compact it back down to something useful, compact it as far as you can get away with really - and then go around and do everything else to that level. Obviously if your shortest leader is very weak, you won't compact it back far, which is a shame because the harder you compact a thing the stronger it will come back. Unfortunately that applies to the strong ones as well as the weak ones so it's easy to get a tree go totally skewiff when you are trying to restore it.

For a central leader, you will have a number of boughs coming out lower; again try to keep them even. You take EVERYTHING off between waist and head height, except say on apples you'll leave the little budding noggin things (forget their name) growing out of the trunk. This produces a kind of two-tiered kind of tea-cake plate looking arrangement. At the top you make sure everything is kept under control so you can pick from a ladder. You don't want anything out of your reach. Given the standard 10 ft ladder, standing on top and reaching, that's about 17 ft high.

Pruning strengthens and solidifies wood. Then when you get next year's growth on it, you are going to compact that back too and take off anything going inwards. Then when it's laden with fruit it all sort of weighs down, but it's all spring loaded by the shortened growth. Never allow a year where it's pruned back long - because that will create a weakening of the structure at its join.

Man, it's almost impossible to describe. But this is the basis of your problem; because if you prune your tree back well each year the tree can handle the fruit burden due to its built-in shock absorbency, even if it's so laden the boughs are touching the ground.

Take a photo - send it to me or post it here, and I'll tell you what I think.

[Absolutely!]

Ha! Been hunting the net and found a well shown pruned peach tree! Underneath all that blossom is a good picture of structure.



Can you see how the limbs go boing, boing, boing - cut off and extend, cut off and extend, cut off and extend. Always outwards and upwards. Not too much growth left for each new year.

[Belladonna]

Ha! Been hunting the net and found a well shown pruned peach tree! Underneath all that blossom is a good picture of structure.



Can you see how the limbs go boing, boing, boing - cut off and extend, cut off and extend, cut off and extend. Always outwards and upwards. Not too much growth left for each new year.

The peach tree I have that is now suffering from blight is pruned just like this! I got it started low and I cut at an outward facing bud to encourage a vase. The Saturn is a vase, unfortunately I got it when it was already pruned and the center starts at 5 feet. I was thinning while on a ladder, hahaha. I hate heights!

I keep the cherries and apples in a central leader shape. I should have planted an orchard consisting of cherry and paw paw trees. They're as easy as it gets.

Abs, you are like an encyclopedia. I don't know how your brain has room to learn anything new.

[Absolutely!]

The peach tree I have that is now suffering from blight is pruned just like this! I got it started low and I cut at an outward facing bud to encourage a vase. The Saturn is a vase, unfortunately I got it when it was already pruned and the center starts at 5 feet. I was thinning while on a ladder, hahaha. I hate heights!

I keep the cherries and apples in a central leader shape. I should have planted an orchard consisting of cherry and paw paw trees. They're as easy as it gets.

Abs, you are like an encyclopedia. I don't know how your brain has room to learn anything new.

I only know what I've actually done - a few years on a central otago orchard, is all. stone and pipfruit with cherries - but never paw paw trees! I think my top number of pruned trees in a day was 116. They paid per tree.

Looks like I might've been preaching to the choir though! You seem to be well onto things!

Thinking about that Saturn, that how awful. I think a giant must've planted it.