Depends on the size of the tree and the fruit set. Here in CA almost every flower sets fruit it takes repeated thins on my 4 year old peach.

If you are trying to cut down that time, try using pruners to trim off 3/4 of a branch verses hand thinning 30 fruit off that branch. You can save a ton of time and open the tree up to air and light.

Mikeeatplants, what's your theory on repeat thinning? I figure the sooner I get off the excess fruit, the less of the tree's energy will be wasted into unripe small peaches tossed in the compost....Do you wait to see which ones are too crowded as they grow? Go back and remove damaged fruits?

Fireballsocal, I already pruned my trees before the flowers opened. If there is too much vegetative growth in the centers, I could remove that now, but that would be new growth with no fruit on it.

I did some more thinning today, but couldn't really time it as I kind of bounced from tree to tree, talking to my mate. I don't even know how many peach trees I have; maybe 20-24. But is is turning into a big job. I know I won't get it all done so I will be able to compare how the crowded ones do compared to the thinned ones.

It just occurred to me today that I seem to need to take most of the baby fruits off the trees. I wonder how much time I have before they will be permanently stunted.

Are peaches thinned in commercial orchards? By hand?

I only do repeat thinning because they are back yard trees. I just do it for 10 minutes of spare time, come out another time do some more, do some more later when I see the branches I've missed. Then, as forum member "Fruitnut" would say. When you think you are done thinning go ahead and do another round because you're probably not. That's good advice, I always tend to leave too much. I agree with Fireball pruning fruiting wood will save you time.

Mathias_Lang, this video may go into more detail for you, regarding using pruners to thin. If you already have pruned the long whippy growth back in the winter, you might just have to bear with hand thinning.

Thanks for that video. I did spend some time looking at thinning (and pruning) videos on youtube on Sunday and Monday. They've helped me to be confident about removing as plenty of fruit. I was more aggressive this year than last, and I think I've got the job basically finished. I think I could even do the type of thinning shown in the Dave Wilson video. Good to know especially in case I have some years when I don't have the time or energy pull one fruit at a time.

Interesting to me is how few leaves some of the trees in other parts of the country have. Amazing they could even get a crop with so few leaves, but they knew what they were doing and were professional growers. My trees look more like the really leafy trees I saw in University of Georgia videos.

I also went in person to see another little orchard about the same size as mine about a mile away. That was interesting; they appear to have done no thinning at all, but there was no one around to talk to.

The commercial orchards here use a spray. I don't know anything about it other than it causes the tree to drop enough fruit so that what remains grows into market quality.

I saw on youtube some of the practices for thinning at the flower stage. A machine that runs down rows of trees and knocks flowers off the trees. People hired to brush of flowers with a toilet scrub brush! I'd forgotten I'd heard of that before. It might be a good way to handle my number of trees, though sad to tamper with the beauty of the flowers.