First winter. Select three or four wideâcrotched branches originating on the trunk 18 to 26 inches

above ground and positioned symmetrically around the trunk. Remove all lower branches. Head the trunk above the highest usable branch. The tree should now have only three or four branches.

First summer. Watersprouts (vigorous upright shoots) often develop at the tree interior and shade

the lower part of the tree. During June these watersprouts should be removed.

Second winter. Remove any remaining watersprouts and keep scaffold branches spreading by

cutting back to outward growing shoots.

Here is a link that might be useful: pruning peach tree

Bart:

Gator Rider's pruning advice and link are useful, but you also need to do some branch spreading. The tree is too much vertically oriented to become a good peach producer. I don't know how that will work in the restricted space of your deer protection system. Here, the deer don't bother the peaches too much, preferring apple and especially sweet cherry trees.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

your tree has a good start nursery good job for you look at second link it show what trying to get to by end of summer this year don't worry about time just prun tree prun_seal paste your cuts don't use the spray. limbs can be pruned up limb pass what want keep you going to cut half that tree away no worries it come back this year you want wide spread of tree at angle between 45 degrees and 90 degress any new growth on top limbs cut off some as comes on should slide hand over top limbs with out touching any limb. The tree try to gorw upward but pruner will stop that any time this summer. Once you get tree shape you want cut back on fertilizer so prurning be less.

Here is a link that might be useful: here another link thats good one

Thanks everyone!

When I planted the trees last year, they were basically in the shape of a broom stick, so I planted them and pretty much left them alone. Big mistake! It was only this winter when I realized that the branches needed some pruning and SPREADING. I'll be working on that issue this year!

Don - thanks for the tip on deer. I put the cages around them last year because I was worried that my new trees would get eaten. I think I'll move them to the apple trees I'm planting this spring!

Thanks again,
Bart

After looking at the trees this weekend, I have a couple more questions......

As Don noted, some of the biggest branches are too vertical to be good fruiting branches. When I examined the tree up close, it seemed that the branches that were the most horizontal were very small and thin. Where the biggest (and most upright) branches are a couple feet long and a half an inch thick, the small, horizontal branches are only a couple inches long and a quarter inch thick.

Should I just go ahead and prune the tree to make these tiny branches the future 4 main fruiting branches?

I don't mind losing whatever growth I gained last year by hacking off the biggest branches, but I don't want to do something that will be worse than leaving the big branches and trying to spread them.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Bart