cough: 1. If you have already planted 8 peach trees, and are still looking for more, I invite you to consider the following sincerely offered suggestions: a) Make sure you know what is involved in growing 1-3 peach trees before you plant a lot more. Growing peaches is difficult even for experienced backyard growers. Peaches can have a lot of insect and disease problems, and usually do. Do not believe anyone who tells you they are easy to grow "organically". b) Before planting a lot of any one thing, have a plan for the use of the fruit in the event you actually get some production. 2. I have a pretty good-size backyard orchard here, and currently have 5 peach trees. I could actually get by with three good varieties, one early, one late-midseason, and one good peento (flat) type. This year, 3 of the trees produced heavily, a mature Golden Jubilee, a young Contender, and a young (white) Sugar Giant. The Contender ripened extremely early -- July 7, and, since early peaches are not much good for freezing, we had to hustle to eat or give away the more than 50 peaches this tree produced. They are all ripe within a period of a week. The average person, weighing less than 300 lbs., can eat a maximum of 2 large peaches per day. Next to ripen was Sugar Giant, a sweet peach without a lot of flavor. It suffered badly from bacterial spot, and at least half the peaches were thrown out. This peach, a modern variety from the Zaiger program in California, was a mistake to plant here. 3. Because of the 4-day Easter freeze, the Flat Wonderful peento type had only a dozen peaches, but they were truly fine eating, and early to ripen. They have a firm flesh, but wonderful flavor. Because of their odd shape, peento peaches are difficult to cut up and prepare for freezing. The little pit resides right in the middle of the doughnut, and the peach does not split apart like a large freestone. If this tree produces a full crop next season, we will again be shoveling them in shortly after Contender is gone. I would be cautious about planting any of the white peento varieties, which are likely to be far more sensitive to brown rot and other maladies. 4. Golden Jubilee is a late-midseason peach, and this mature (12 year) tree was an abundant producer this year, with about 125 peaches, of which at least 3 dozen weighed one pound or more. My spouse froze 16 quarts of these peaches, which are firm, easy to prepare, and fine for freezing. But we still have a dozen of these peaches in the refrigerator. They ripened the last few days of August and early September. 5. The bottom line here is: I really don't know what we would do with any more peaches. Once you have figured out how to grow them, and protect them against all their enemies, they can be very abundant. After two early sprays with Imidan against plum curculio, and careful thinning, all my peaches were bagged in try-on "footies", which protected them against insects (mainly oriental fruit moth) for the balance of the season. And very effectively - without any further spraying. Footie installation is, however, tedious, and calls for some acquired skill. 6. If you are going to grow peaches, you should become familiar as soon as possible with diseases such as bacterial spot (on the fruit), bacterial canker (on the limbs), and insects like the plum curculio (early) and oriental fruit moth (all season long). After that, you can get some advice here on how to deal with those problems. You should select the varieties to plant very carefully, based on such factors as their ripening times, and resistance to diseases like bacterial spot. Planting what Home Depot happens to have on hand is not the best way to choose your peach varieties. 7. Without considerable effort to learn the essentials of peach growing, you can plant 100 trees and still not get any decent, usable peaches. On the other hand, two or three carefully chosen peach varieties, with the right care, can produce enough peaches to make your family tired of eating peaches, and the neighbors too. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Sorry about that. I used the wrong code for posting images. Here's the post again Hi everyone. I planted this July-Elberta peach tree sometime in mid-may. It was a bare root fruit tree. The branches never came out from the trunk because the buds were dead, however, on the very top of the tree, branches did start growing. Anyways, I believe this tree is 2-3 years old, however its only been about 4 months or so since its been planted. From where the there is growth, there seems to be one main branch and right where the main branch is coming out of, there are 2-3 more branches. The main branch is giving off plenty of secondary branches And there are also many branches coming off of the other two branches I mentioned earlier: And all the secondary branches are growing in together and criss-crossing and what not like so: How can I go about doing this? My thoughts are two cut off the secondary branches that are growing inwards and are criss-crossing with other inward growing branches. However, as for the brances growing outward from the main branches, I will just leave them alone. Will this help in whatever growing season is left for the peach tree? Thank you!

did it leaf out?

It won't recover on its own. Also, how serious the disease will be from one year to the next, depends on the weather as well as how susceptible or resistant the tree is. Wet springs assist disease develop mush more than will a dry spring. You might ask at a local garden center about the disease tolerance of your specific kind of peach. And then, if it's it quite susceptible, replace it with a more resistant kind. For now, collect and discard the affected leaves. Any that you can't reach will fall of their own accord; collect and discard as you see them. At the end of the season, collect and discard all fallen leaves. Next year, be certain to spray with an appropriate product.