Pruning Peaches and Nectarines
1. Start with the You Tube, "Pruning Apple vs. Peach trees" by Utah State University Extension. Then go out in your backyard and make sure you can identify the leaf and flower buds that show up on peach trees and note how old the branches are that have the flower buds.
2. Go to the Flemings Nursery pdf titled "Pruning fruit, ornamental and flowering trees" and look at the pictures and read the text below the pictures of peaches.
The above two activities help underscore the huge chasm that exists between how you prune a tree that bears on 1-year wood (a peach) and a tree that bears on 2-year and older wood. If you know where the fruit buds will be located and what they look like then you can proceed on to make some pruning cuts.
3. Get "Training and Pruning Your Home Orchard" PDF created by Oregon State U., U. of Idaho, and Washington State U. and read the general section and then the section on peaches.
4 .Most home gardeners will use the open center/open vase to train and structure Japanese/Asian/Hybrid plums. For a nice discussion and short video of training trees in the open center structure go to the Stark Brothers Nursery site covering this other topic.
5. Go to You Tube a do a search of "pruning peaches and take a look at some of the following:
1. Start with the You Tube, "Pruning Apple vs. Peach trees" by Utah State University Extension. Then go out in your backyard and make sure you can identify the leaf and flower buds that show up on peach trees and note how old the branches are that have the flower buds.
2. Go to the Flemings Nursery pdf titled "Pruning fruit, ornamental and flowering trees" and look at the pictures and read the text below the pictures of peaches.
The above two activities help underscore the huge chasm that exists between how you prune a tree that bears on 1-year wood (a peach) and a tree that bears on 2-year and older wood. If you know where the fruit buds will be located and what they look like then you can proceed on to make some pruning cuts.
3. Get "Training and Pruning Your Home Orchard" PDF created by Oregon State U., U. of Idaho, and Washington State U. and read the general section and then the section on peaches.
4 .Most home gardeners will use the open center/open vase to train and structure Japanese/Asian/Hybrid plums. For a nice discussion and short video of training trees in the open center structure go to the Stark Brothers Nursery site covering this other topic.
5. Go to You Tube a do a search of "pruning peaches and take a look at some of the following:
- "Pruning Peaches" by OK Gardening Classics (three year old tree)
- *Pruning Peaches and Apples" by Walter Reeves of UGA Extension (excellent on open center vs. central leader)
- "How to Prune Peach Trees" by Utah State University Extension
- "How to Prune a 3rd-year Peach or Stone Fruit in Early Spring" by Gurney's videos-Gurney Seed
- "How to Prune a large four-year old Peach Tree in Late Winter" by Gurney's Video-Gurney Seed
- "How to Prune and Old, Neglected, Out of Control Fruit Tree In Early Spring" by Gurney's Video-Gurney Seed