Do You Have to Prune Peach Trees?

Pruning is one of those often misunderstood aspects of peach trees that many people shy away from without the direct advice of someone who has the experience and confidence necessary to direct them. I get it. It isn’t like you can change your mind about a branch you cut off and just put it back on the tree. Consequently, I’ve seen many people who simply avoid pruning altogether, thinking that it’s better to do nothing than to do something with the risk of that something being wrong. To answer the main question here, YES you have to prune peach trees. If you’re interested in learning the longer answer to that question, I’ll explain why and how to do it correctly.

Winter Pruning is Invigorating for Peach Trees!

Let’s get the biggest obstacle out of the way first. You want to prune a tree but you’re afraid to hurt it. Let me put your mind at ease. Pruning peach trees in the winter when they are dormant (leaves have all fallen off) is actually invigorating for the tree. Timing really is everything here because the same cannot be said for summer pruning, which is dwarfing, rather than invigorating. The real hitch is that it’s winter, so the tree looks like it’s dead (no leaves) and our brains cant wrap themselves around potentially harming our precious trees when they’re already looking rough. Thankfully, science comes to the rescue here.

A tiny bit of science

Trees rely on their leaves for photosynthesis, which in turn helps the trees to create carbohydrates. These carbohydrates are used by the tree to grow and to perform the critical functions of being alive. Naturally, when you cut off leaves, you decrease the tree’s ability to create carbohydrates. For this reason, pruning in the summer isn’t invigorating but is, instead, dwarfing. When you prune in the summer, you are actively removing part of the tree’s capacity to grow.

Winter pruning, on the other hand, isn’t just a matter of NOT cutting off leaves (which already fell off the tree anyway), but it’s also a matter of not wasting accumulated carbohydrates. In the winter, when a tree goes dormant, it will store carbohydrates in the roots instead of in the branches. This means that when you prune in the winter, you don’t waste the potential energy the tree has accumulated (carbohydrates) or the potential of the tree to create more of that energy (leaves).

So prune in the winter!

Pruning Makes Branches Stronger

In the height of the summer, your full-size peach tree is going to be carrying potentially HUNDREDS OF POUNDS of added weight in the form of beautiful plump red peaches. Naturally, you need the branches to be strong if they’re going to hold that weight without breaking when the peaches reach their final stage and are plump, heavy, and full of flavor and juice. Pruning out extra branches means that the branches which are left behind will receive a greater amount of growth the next year and will, consequently, be able to hold more weight. Without pruning, that growth would have been split between all of the branches, resulting in a tree full of thin, weak branches.

Pruning Keeps Fruit In Reach

You probably won’t realize it for the first few years, but peaches only grow on wood that grew the previous year. This previous-year growth is called the “fruiting wood”. As the tree gets larger, the peaches get further and further away from the ground because the fruiting wood, or new growth, is typically at the very tip of the branches. Eventually, the peaches will all be out of reach as the tree continues to grow far taller than you. Sure, you can use a ladder to pick the fruit (which is quite a workout if you have more than a couple trees), but a tall tree also complicates other necessities like thinning the fruit and spraying for pests.

Pruning Keeps Fruit Healthier

Obviously, you have a peach tree because you want to eat peaches. I know, I know, a peach tree is pretty, it makes nice flowers, and provides a pleasant shade in the heat of summer. But wouldn’t it be nice to also be eating a big, fat, juicy peach while reclining in that shade?

When the canopy of a tree (branches and leaves) is too dense, it can increase the pressure of pests that you already have to fight off in order to enjoy those peaches. Branches and their leaves also tend to be weaker and receive less sunlight, which can make them more prone to bacterial disease. Additionally, the tree doesn’t dry out as fast after a rain, which helps fungus grow more easily. On top of all of this, pesticides and fungicides that are designed to combat the most common peach pests cannot easily penetrate the canopy to treat the affected areas.

In short, cutting out some branches means those left behind will be stronger and the fruit will be less prone to disease.

Pruning Creates Higher Quality Peaches

Sunlight is critical to the production of a rich, full flavor peach. If the leaves around a peach don’t receive sufficient sunlight, the quality of that fruit will be noticeably lower. Because peach trees tend to grow upwards, instead of outwards, they have a bad habit of shading out lower branches. For that reason, when we prune our trees, we are intentionally trying to create a single layer of outward growth, sun facing branches. By creating a “bowl-shape,” (with the center branches of the tree pruned out) we are ensuring that the remaining branches are receiving the most sunlight possible and the peaches will be the best they can possibly be.

How Do We Prune Peach Trees?

Pruning is, in fact, the single most labor intense aspect of growing peaches. Every year, in the winter, we prune off as much as 50-60% of a peach tree in anticipation of the new growth and crop in the spring.

Pruning practices change throughout the life of a peach tree. In the first years of life, you’re trying to create a strong foundation of scaffold branches that will carry the weight of the fruit for the rest of that tree’s life. If you’re just planting your peach trees, you can read about how to create a crotch and select the main scaffold limbs in these articles linked. The following two years, you are selecting and developing the secondary scaffold limbs that branch off of the main scaffold limbs. In later years, you are pruning off extra branches for the purpose of fruit thinning, sunlight infiltration, and maintaining tree height at around 7 feet tall to keep fruit within reach.

Where you are at in the life of your peach tree will dictate how you prune that tree. Your pruning objectives for the tree will change every year until the tree is fully mature at around 5 years old.

Conclusion

Pruning peach trees is vital to the health and productivity of a peach tree. While a peach tree will grow just fine without pruning, the quality of the fruit and the health of the tree will be significantly diminished. If timed properly in the form of winter / dormant pruning, the act of pruning a tree produces measurable benefits to the tree.

As always, if you live in or near Stephenville, Texas, you’re welcome to get ahold of us if you have questions or need some help. We’ve learned so much from the gracious help of those who came before us, and we are happy to pass that torch to the next new grower who needs a leg up.