You guys. Peach trees are a lot of work.
This year we started pruning in late November off and on when we had time between Awana at Tolar Baptist and our regular jobs at Suspension.com. It took all the way until mid-March before we were done!
You might think that when the leaves fall off the trees and they go dormant for the winter that we can finally rest and relax a little bit. The truth is, that’s probably when the largest amount of labor is required for growing peach trees.
Peaches are a bit special in that they only grow fruit on wood that grew on the tree in the previous year. In this case, the branches that grew in 2018 are the branches that will put on peaches in 2019. The problem with this is that if you don’t cut off a significant chunk of branches each year, there wont be any room for new branches the next year.
Every year we have to prune off about 60% of the tree.
Graham Slaughter
Even a brand new tree requires pruning.
Thanks Tiffany, Dad, Chelsea, PJ, Grant, David, and Rhett for your help getting the job done this year. We couldn’t have done it without you.
Now we can watch all those pretty blooms turn into juicy peaches.
[…] A mature peach tree takes as much as 45 minutes to prune each year. When you add that up over the 1000 trees we have right now, pruning is a ridiculously time consuming aspect of growing peach trees. Without annual winter pruning, your peach trees will eventually grow too tall and the fruit will migrate higher and higher in the tree until you can’t reach it. The fruit quality will suffer, the tree vigor will be reduced, and your main branches will not develop well. Each year our pruning will remove around 50% of the wood on any given tree. That wood must then be gathered up and disposed of. […]
I caught about 50% of the tree off this year because of canker pretty much I just cut the tree in all that’s left is the stump sticking up what do you think
We have been very blessed to not have to deal with any canker yet. I guess I’ll tell what when it happens to me!