Archive for the 'Peaches/Nectarines' Category
I added a new Arctic Rose nectarine tree to my collection of backyard fruit trees a few weeks ago. The first picture above shows what the tree looked like after I brought it home from the nursery, and the second picture shows how it looked after I pruned it severely, cutting off most of the branches. I have read several resources over the past year about pruning fruit trees. Most of these sources advise home growers to prune fruit trees regularly, especially in the first few years after they are planted when they are still small.
I have always wondered why the branches of many backyard fruit trees bend and break under the weight of the fruit that they bear. Why is it that these trees have not evolved strong enough branches to bear the weight of their fruit? Put another way, why it is that these fruit trees have evolved to bear more fruit than their branches can support the weight of?
The answer is that most of the fruit trees that people grow for food today are not entirely the result of natural selection. Breeders have bred fruit trees such as apples, pears, and peaches to bear large fruits. The wild versions of the fruit trees that we know and love are much more able to support the weight of their fruit, partly because the fruit they bear is much smaller than the cultivated varieties we cherish. For example, today’s large cultivated apples are probably descended from crabapple trees, which produce fruits that are only about 1-2 inches in diameter. Wild peaches trees that grow in their native China produce fruits that are much smaller and more sour that the peaches that are cultivated throughout the world today.
Although fruit tree breeders have been very successful at improving the size and flavor of many modern cultivars of fruit trees, they have not improved the strength of the branches of fruit trees. The only way to do that is to prune often and heavily. Pruning the branches of a tree stimulates the tree to thicken and strengthen the shortened branches that remain, making them much better able to support the weight of a heavy load of large fruits.
I am now pruning my fruit trees 1-3 times a year so that they can support the weight of their fruit without needing supports or causing branch breakage. Depending on how fast an individual tree is growing, I sometimes prune the same tree as often as 3 times per year, in the winter, in the spring, and in the summertime. Many of my fruit trees grow rapidly in the spring after a winter prune. Spring and summer pruning does a good job of reducing the vigorous growth rate of trees. Frequent pruning has kept our fruit trees small so that it is easier to spray them (if needed), net them, harvest the fruit, and perform subsequent pruning.
I have read repeatedly that is especially important to prune peach and nectarine trees heavily, because they grow vigorously and produce many more fruits than they can support. I think that at least 2/3 of the branches of a peach/nectarine tree should be removed each year to control its size and fruit production. If pruning doesn’t do enough to reduce the number of peach or nectarine fruits a tree produces, I will thin the fruits to about 4-6 inches apart in May-June. Thinning the fruit greatly reduces the likelihood of branches breaking. Also, in the years that I thinned my peaches, my O’Henry peach tree has produced peaches that are much larger in size than in the years I have not thinned them.
February 20 2010 | Fruit and Peaches/Nectarines | No Comments »
The fruit on our O’Henry peach tree is ripening. Our tree has far less fruit on it this year than last year, because I pruned it more during the dormant season. I discussed my pruning technique in an earlier post. The tree only has about 40-50 peaches this year, compared with about 200 last year, which is a more reasonable number for our needs.
This year’s crop of peaches are much larger than they were last year. They are nearly the same size as grocery store peaches. However, the ones I have tried so far taste about the same as last year’s crop. Reducing the size of crop greatly increased the size of the fruit (nearly twice as large), but it doesn’t seem to have affected the flavor much.
O’Henry is a good tasting peach, but our O’Henry’s don’t have a very sweet flavor. They have slightly more tartness than sweetness. I really want to grow peach and nectarine trees that produce exceptionally sweet fruits. So last March, I planted a white snow beauty peach tree and a white snow queen nectarine tree. Snow beauty and snow queen are supposed to produce fruits that are more sweet than tart. Here is an interesting article from Dave Wilson Nursery about white peaches and nectarines.
I sprayed our O’Henry peach tree twice early in the year for peach leaf curl using lime sulfur spray. See my last post about spraying for peach leaf curl. The spray appears to have worked well. Our tree had only few leaves in the spring showing signs of leaf curl. The vast majority of the leaves were and continue to be very healthy looking and curl-free.
August 23 2009 | Peaches/Nectarines | 1 Comment »
I planted several new fruit trees earlier this year in our yard, including an almond, another peach, a nectarine, a plum, and 2 more cherries. I sometimes hear people say that fruit trees take too many years to produce fruit. For them, I have three words: plums, peaches, and nectarines. All three typically bear fruit by their second year in the ground.
I planted a 4 variety multi-grafted plum tree in February. It already has dozens of plums (see first picture above). Most of the plums are hidden behind the leaves in this picture. The 4 varieties are beauty, nubiana, laroda, and elephant heart. They ripen in June, July, August, and September, respectively, for a 4 four month long plum season. I have already eaten several of the beauty plums, and they are good, with just a little tartness in the skin. Plums produce fruit at a young age. Although my tree wasn’t a new bare root tree when I bought it. It looked like it had been in a pot at least a year.
The other new fruit trees I planted as bare root trees. They don’t have any fruit this year, but they are growing vigorously. The second picture shows the new nectarine (snow queen) in the foreground and the new peach (snow beauty) in the back right. The peach and nectarine trees will likely have their first crop of fruit next summer. Peaches and nectarines produce fruit on branches that grew during the previous year. They also produce fruit at an early age like plums.
I found that one of the keys to growing fruit trees successfully is giving them a regular supply of water and not letting their root systems dry out at any time. In our dry climate, that means regular watering. I have micro-spray devices on all of our fruit trees that are controlled by an automatic watering system. They get watered for about 5 minutes every other day through the spring and summer months. I have found that this schedule keeps the roots moist without over-watering during normal conditions here. During hot weather (90 degrees plus), I water them everyday and/or for a longer time.
Some people are lucky enough to live in climates that get rain on and off throughout the spring and summer months. Last month, I visited family in Kentucky. The small fruit orchard in their backyard includes two peach trees. One of the things I noticed was that the leaves of their peach trees were a pale green color, and they were not actively growing new leaves. The leaves were not a healthy looking deep green like the leaves of our peach trees in California.
My first thought was that they looked like they were not getting enough water. The ground around the trees looked dried out. That seemed strange, because I was told that it had rained a lot in early May before we arrived. Apparently, the sun dries out the ground quickly there too in the late spring.
I have noticed that when fruit trees like peaches don’t get enough water for several days or weeks, the leaves tend to turn pale, and they stop growing. I think that it begins to happen as soon as the roots dry out, which probably happens a lot sooner in young trees that have small roots systems. The lesson I have taken from my experiences is that it is important to prevent the root systems of young fruit trees from drying out, so that they continue to grow through the spring and summer. That’s particularly important for newly planted trees.
Even in Kentucky were it rains frequently through the spring and summer, it’s possible that peaches and other fruit trees can dry out after a week or more without a significant downpour. I was told that nobody bothers to water their outdoor plants in Kentucky, because they feel that there is no need to. But perhaps they should consider supplemental watering during dry spells.
June 21 2009 | Cherries and Peaches/Nectarines and Plums | No Comments »
On Friday, I sprayed my peach and nectarine trees with lime sulfur spray to control peach leaf curl. I also sprayed them in late December. I have been spraying my peach tree twice each winter while the tree is dormant since I planted it back in 2002, and it has never had more than a few leaves infected with leaf curl.
I used to use another chemical to control leaf curl. I switched to lime sulfur last winter, because I read that it is certified in organic growing. So far, lime sulfur has been very effective at controlling leaf curl in my yard. My mom has used it on her peach and nectarine trees for decades, and it has also worked well for her. I have read that some people in other parts of the country have not had as much luck with lime sulfur. However, there are several chemical sprays on the market for controlling peach leaf curl, and chances are that at least one of them will be effective.
I have heard people coming into our local nursery complaining about peach leaf curl in the spring. Unfortunately, it is too late to spray then. The spray needs to be applied at least once while the tree is dormant. I typically spray twice. In very wet years, I spray three times.
Now is the time to spray peach and nectarine trees to control the leaf curl fungus. I have read that the most important time to spray is just as the buds are beginning to swell, and before the blossoms open up. With all of the warm weather we have been having in the past month (today the high temperate neared 70 degrees again), the buds on my white nectarine tree are staring to swell (see above picture). I expect it to bloom before the end of February.
February 01 2009 | Peaches/Nectarines | 3 Comments »
Yesterday, I pruned our peach tree. I prune our peach tree every winter to keep it small and manageable. Our tree is a small 7 year old tree. It only took about 20 minutes to prune.
Last summer, our tree grew vigorously, but some of the newly grown branches were long and weak. I trimmed those branches to prevent them from breaking next summer under the weight of the fruit.
I also cut off all of the high branches above about 10 feet, so that the tree will not develop fruit that is difficult to reach on high branches. I also cut off all of the branches that were sagging down and branches that were crossing or touching other branches. In general, I try to cut off enough branches to keep the tree in a small compact shape.
Recently, I bought a book entitled “How to Prune Fruit Trees” by R. Sanford Martin. This book provides specific details on how home growers should prune fruit trees. According to the book, different techniques should be used when pruning each particular type of fruit tree. For example, peach trees require different pruning techniques than pear trees. I didn’t know that until I read this book. I used to think that the same pruning technique could be applied to all types of fruit trees.
According to this book, ideal pruning techniques require much more attention to detail and the particular type of fruit tree being pruned. The book covers specific pruning techniques for a few dozen different varieties of fruit trees and bushes.
Peach trees develop all of their fruit on new branches that grew during the previous summer. Also, as I have discovered, peach trees tend to set a large number of small sized fruits.
Different sources suggest different techniques for forcing a peach tree to develop a small number of peaches that are large in size. Some sources advise cutting off a portion of the length of each of the new branches and twigs that grew during the previous summer. Cutting off a portion of each new branch will transfer the tree’s energy into the remaining buds, producing larger and better peaches next year. Other sources suggest entirely cutting off a large percentage (e.g, half) of the newly grown branches, while leaving the other new branches untrimmed. Of course, newly grown branches that are too long should be trimmed according to both techniques.
Last summer, our small peach tree produced over 100 small peaches. I was disappointed that the fruit was not larger, and I resolved to do something about it next year. Yesterday, I trimmed all of the newly grown branches and twigs back by about one-half in an attempt to reduce the amount of fruit production next year. I found that the newly grown branches are easy to identify, because they are thin, green and red in color, and are not woody like the older branches.
I will report back on the results next year. If our tree still produces more than about 50 fruits despite the new pruning method, I will thin them out in May.
December 08 2008 | Peaches/Nectarines | No Comments »
The peaches are ripening on the 6 year old O’Henry peach tree in our yard this week. The tree had about 200 peaches. That’s too many for me and my partner to eat before they rot. After giving some away, I still have a lot left. So I am going to turn a bunch of them into jarred peach preserves.
The peaches are tasty, but they are small in size, much smaller than last year’s crop. I think I should have thinned the fruit more. I waited too long to thin this year (July), and I didn’t remove enough of the pre-ripened fruit from the tree. Last year, this tree had far fewer peaches, but they were much larger. I think the peaches tasted better and were juicier last year.
Next year, I plan to prune the tree much more than I did this year. Peaches and nectarines fruit on one year old branches. If I remove more of the branches in the dormant season, the tree should have less fruit next year. I also plan to thin aggressively in May and June to reduce the crop to about 100 fruits.
O’Henry peaches are a good variety overall. They don’t rot easily or split, and I have never seen insects eating them. Although squirrels love them, so the tree needs to be netted.
My mom bought and planted this tree in our yard after she bought O’Henry peaches at a fruit stand and really enjoyed them. The tree has grown incredibly fast in the past two years, after I transplanted it from the front yard to a sunnier spot in the back yard. I waited too long in the dormant season to transplant it. The tree was just starting to bloom. It went into shock and nearly died. I fertilized and watered it excessively the spring and summer after that, and it came back in a big way. Now, it’s one of the best looking fruit trees in our yard, and it requires very little care. Besides watering and occasional fertilizing, the only special care I give it is dormant season spray for peach leaf curl and of course netting.
August 23 2008 | Peaches/Nectarines | No Comments »