SHOP PRODUCTS
Houzz Logo Print
daisy_diva

I inherited a peach tree ....pruning? spraying? thinning?

daisy_diva
15 years ago

My husband and I bought a house last spring and inherited a yard full of herbs, plants, flowers, and trees. The problem is, that our first 'spring' we just had fun letting things grow and seeing what they are, but now that we know, we want to take care of them. My main goal this year is to not screw up the peach tree. It is pretty established, but the house is only 6 years old, so it can't be that old. I have no idea what kind of peach tree it is. Last year we had a wet season, and we hardly had to water it. In fact, we didn't know it was a fruit tree until it had the fuzzy little green balls. Researching, we finally figured out it was a peach tree. It was LOADED last year, but all of the peaches were very small (maybe we didn't water enough though and thought we did?). We harvested a lot, I was able to freeze several quarts of sliced peaches, and they had wonderful taste. Now this year, I want to know what I need to do to get bigger peaches.

So here are my questions:

1. Do you thin early fruit? How and when?

2. Last season our tree's leaves had some fungus looking thing on it, which we heard on the radio was common last spring in our area, so I've read that you need to spray it with dormant fruit tree spray. Is it too late to do this? How do you know when a tree is no longer dormant? Springs are tricky in Kansas when there are warm days in Jan/Feb every now and then.

3. The birds were a real pain last year. Suggestions?

4. Should we be looking for things to prune?

Comments (4)