Bananas is right about keeping the soil strata as it is. If you don't have a terrible drainage problem your trees will be fine. I've seen commercial apple orchards in clay soil where in early spring the water just sits on the surface, but by the time trees begin leafing out they find enough oxygen for very vigorous growth. I used such an orchard as a nursery site to grow bearing age trees after making a deal with the grower. The trees grew great. If other species of trees (not willows!) are growing well in this soil, I'm sure you're fine, if not, run with berns made from existing soil. Testing the drainage as mentioned is also a great guide line, but I wonder how the soil in the orchard-nursery I mentioned would have tested out.

Lisa, Thinning refers to removing fruit, not pruning. It can be confusing because there is a term called, "thinning cuts", which refer to a type of pruning. However, when the word thinning is used in the context of fruit, it simply means removing some of the fruit and has nothing to do with pruning. Removing some of the fruit is beneficial because it allows the fruit remaining to become much bigger. It prevents broken branches because too many fruits will weigh branches down and break them. It also keeps trees healthier because it prevents over-cropping. So Jellyman was telling you to "thin-off" all the oozing peaches first (since they will be no good anyway). Then make sure there is a minimum of 6" or more of branch space between the remaining fruits. If there is not a minimum of 6-8" of branch space, then keep removing fruit until you've met that criteria. It's not unusual to remove 80% or more of the fruit from a peach tree. If you still have some good fruits left on the tree, it would be advisable to protect those with an insecticide. Triazicide Once and Done is a good choice and available at Walmart. You asked if it is OK to prune now. There may be no need to prune now, but if you feel a need, it is OK to prune now. Just understand when you prune off wood, you may be pruning off some fruit too. Naturally, any wood that is pruned, also removes the fruit attached to it. For leaf curl, you can spray either in the fall or spring (under heavy pressure) or just in the spring. For a fall spray, spray after the trees loose their leaves. Not every single leaf has to be gone, but the tree needs to be pretty bare when you spray it. Being a long way from MA, I have no idea what month this would occur. For the leaf curl spring spray, spray sometime before the buds start to swell. The idea is you want the peach trees still fully dormant when you apply the spring spray. Once the trees start waking up in the spring, it's too late to protect them against leaf curl. My guess is as soon as your winter snow melts would be a good time to get out there and spray for leaf curl. One side effect is your neighbors will think you're crazy spraying bare trees. For entertainment, you can encourage this perception by watering your trees while it's snowing. Do this while wearing a nightgown.

I don't think insulating a pot will do much good unless there is a heat source inside the insulation. Insulation slows the transfer of heat from something warm to something cold. Thus if the pot is warm and the air cools, insulation would help slow down the cooling of the pot. However, without a source of heat in the pot, eventually the pot will cool to the surrounding air temperature. If you had a few cold nights to worry about, perhaps the insulation would keep the soil in the pot from ever reaching the air temperature, but it won't keep the pot warm through a long NH winter. insulation would help slow the rate of temperature change in the pot, which I am sure would be good for the roots, but you still might end up with dead plants due to excessively cold roots. i would plant the trees in the ground. Lots of fruit orchards exist on fairly bad soils, so I think your spot will be fine. I find most things, especially long-lived things like trees, are a lot easier to grow in the ground than in a pot.

What about our hard water? I've read some other posts where people hand-water their plants with vinegar-spiked water. I was kind of thinking of taking some fat (wide) 15 gallon tubs, cutting out the bottoms, and using those to plant the blueberries inground. That way, they would be somewhat isolated and I could treat their soil more locally (iron sulfate, elemental surful, peat, and some of the other amendments that people have mentioned in other posts). Maybe it would be easier to keep their immediate environment more acidic if I was treating a smaller area? How does that sound? Do you think doing that buys me anything? I don't know what I could do about watering though... seems the hard water would be fighting my attempts with the soil...