Thanks for the info fruitnut,jellyman. I did take the garbage bags off first thing in the am before sun came up, as I thought about the leaves/trees cooking. The news here says that 90% of the peach crop in south carolina is gone. I don't know what else I could have done, as the 10-20mph winds during the cold snap here, would and did prevent any heat sources near trees from keeping the air warm. I am watching the 4 peach trees to see if in next month leaves come back, and I will be careful not to overwater them. I pour 5 gallons of water each week on each tree, includes the cheeries and apples. As I said before the apples and cheeries are fine, as jellyman pointed out, I would have been better just to have not done anything, and not used the garbage bags. Thanks for all the info.

The links mentioned are written by people who are trained in commercial fruit production and contain a lot of useful info but also fail to address crucial issues to home growers that might render some of the suggestions more harmful than useful. For example, most of the home orchards that I manage have pest raccoons and squirrels. If you fail to set up a functioning electric fence your best defense may be to train your trees with a straight trunk for their first 4 feet so that you can encircle the trunk with something that will prevent these animals from climbing up the trees or squirrels from jumping aboard. If you don't start training the trees with this intent from year one it is often difficult to impossible to do so retroactively. Insect and disease control is much different in a home orchard than in a large commercial planting. Commercial orchards must produce pristine fruit and the large plantings are insect and fungus magnets. Peaches will probably need protection from borers from the time they go into the ground- most other pests you can learn about as the trees mature but your most useful info will probably come from this site and not from university literature. Such literature is never up to date on the compounds available for pest control in home orchards.

Omni, if this branch is sprouting from below the graft, then it is the rootstock trying to leaf out. Not helping your tree at all and snap it off. You don't want branches sprouting from the rootstock, or suckers coming up from the ground from the rootstock. Even if it's from the graft (above the graft line), you may not want a branch that low, so again, just take your thumb and rub it off. That's called "thumb pruning". Patty S.

"Did you really mean 8 to 9 'FEET" ?" Have you seen Little Shop of Horrors? :) I didn't water except once when it had been dry & hot for about 6 weeks. The tree was headed back at about 30" tall when I got it. Perhaps I should have pruned throughout the summer this year but everything I have says not to be too aggressive the first couple of years. Pruning season for plums is late March here but I'm itching to clean these up so I keep eyeballing them trying to pick out what to remove. First year creep, my eye!