Farmer, I'll offer a few general comments with regard to the peach. Most people don't prune their peach trees at all, or wait too long and then want to correct. After this it can be pretty tough sometimes, though not always impossible, to bring it back to the shape or size desired. Perhaps an analogy would be building a house. If the foundation received little attention, it's difficult to rectify a problem, if the rest of the house is already on top. The good news is your tree is still small enough you can train it any way you like. If it were my tree, I'd select three scaffolds, going in different directions and cut everything else off. Ideal scaffolds point more horizontal than vertical, are spaced uniformly around the trunk, and are separated by about 4" vertically on the trunk. This is going to get a bit complicated, but I'll try to give you some specific advice about your peach tree. It's hard to tell from pictures, but on your peach tree it looks like you could select the big scaffold lowest down (pointing towards the right) for your first scaffold. Take a tree saw and cut the scaffold from the underside about 1/2" away from the collar. Cut about 60% through the branch with your tree saw (again from the underside). Move up the branch and inch and repeat (cut 60% through the branch from the underside). Move up the branch another inch and do it again for a third time. Now that branch will easily bend down. Bend it down about 30 degrees from horizontal and tie it there with some string (make sure you tie a large loop, not a tight loop, around the branch so you don't girdle it). Don't pull so hard you break the branch off. Tie the string to something which will hold the branch at that angle. I strong piece of wire pushed in the ground makes a nice anchor, or a large rock, or a jug of water, anything. The branch cuts you made with the tree saw will heal over and the branch will be set more horizontal. Because of the cuts, the branch will grow a little slower, which is a good thing in this case because it's currently too dominant. Next there is a thin low branch pointing toward the left. Leave it. It should make a nice scaffold the way it's going. It is a bit too close to your first scaffold on the trunk, but these things happen. Lastly, go up the tree a little more and pick a scaffold pointing away from the camera. I can't tell where on the trunk that occurs, but I do see some shoots pointing that way. You'll need to tie one of those shoots down. They look small enough you won't have to use the tree saw. Again tie it down about 30 degrees from horizontal. Cut everything else off. As your peach tree grows, keep pruning the strong vigorous vertical (upright) growth and leave the more horizontal growth. As you get more growth on the three scaffolds you selected, don't be afraid to keep tying things down if you want. You can always prune upright growth off, but you can tie it down too, if you are short of more horizontal growth. Either way, just don't allow that strong vigorous upward growth. It isn't the most fruitful wood, and it gets your tree too tall. Lastly, it would be a good idea to put about a 4' ring of mulch around that tree. Young peach trees don't compete well with grass.

Herbert, yup, I see your beautiful and healthy trees- sure looks like a lot of scaffolds! I would certainly recommend gradually thinning them, which is always a little difficult- the trees will often look lopsided for a time, no matter what scaffolds get removed. Still, a 4 scaffold tier is really generally the max or you wind up without enough light in the interior and adequate room for secondary and tertiery branching. I love your glysphosphate rings, by the way. Looks like you timed the aplication perfectly. After mid-summer you can let the grass and weeds return, and it looks like that's what you do.

My new peach tree has goo, too. From the information I've dug up the problem can be a wide variety of things: winter injury, mechanical injury, bacterial disease, etc. I'm trying to find out from the nursery I bought it from if it's a problem it will recover from or if it is destined to expire. Sigh! Here's a useful link. Let me know what else you find out. Good luck, farmgirls Here is a link that might be useful: Cherry Gumming

Fruitnut, I have 2 methods and I'm sharing my trade secrets here (what the hell- I'm 6 months from 60 and hope to retire in 25 years anyway). I start some plants straight in the ground, planting them way too close in a fenced off area. Planting them close makes maintenance per plant much less expensive given that it's all done by hand (don't ask). For apples in my climate it takes about 3 years to size them up to about 1.5" diameter- at least when planted this close. I carefully dig up these BR and put them in short 20 gallon pots (wide and shallow) in a mix of 1 part peat, 1 composted wood chips or stable waste ( almost pure humus with some carbo lumps) and 1 sand, plus a little wood ash. They limp the first season but I sell them the next for around $180 per. At this point they are bearing, 12' tall and well branched and the foliage is back to mormal. Other trees I transfer to Carl Whitcomb grow bags in real soil and let them grow about another 3 years and sell them for $250 per, or less to contractors. The grow bags I use are his last edition because they allow more root out of the bag and I can grow them without any irrigation at all- even through drought. Irrigation would reduce production by about a year, I'm sure, but in my operation only my potted plants get any and they are set in the soil as well. I always take some trees in the grow bags, remove the bags and put them into 25 Gallon pots with the soil intact but surrounded by my potting mix which allows me to sell some larger trees during the growing season. Surprisingly the soil surrounded by potting mix works very well and you might want to try that method for your trees as the soil gives you much more bang per square inch and costs less. Repotting would require only replacing the artificial soil on the edge of the soil ball. It makes things real heavy though, and my soil is not too fine so I don't know how it would work with a more clay soil but I bet it would work just fine. I'm sure my prices seem outrageous by your regional standards but I'm less than an hour from NYC and here it's more than competitive- it's the best deal around- because I have scores of varieties and they're actually properly shaped for fruit production. They also plug in better than the competitions BB'd trees, especially the ones I have in pots.