Xtremehorticulture

Leave a Few Peaches to Enjoy on Young Peach Tree

Q. I don’t know how old my peach tree is. I assume it’s really young, like two or three years old because it is small. I am pinching off the small peach fruits leaving one small fruit every 4-6 inches along the branch. For this tree, that ends up being one to 2 peaches per branch, giving me overall maybe 10 peaches on this young tree. A. Your thinning of the fruit sounds about right for the age of your tree. There are some people who pull all of the fruit off of a young tree hoping to get the tree into greater production beginning in its fourth year of growth.             It doesn’t really matter. I like to have a few fruit from young trees, an incentive for my labor. It won’t hurt the tree to have it produce fruit early.             If your tree is really healthy and puts on a lot of new growth this and the following year then you should increase fruit production 300 to 400% over the next two years. You should be nearing full production by the fourth or fifth year if you are watering, fertilizing and pruning adequately.             You will prune your tree in December or January. Look for my pruning videos on YouTube under the name of Extremehort. This should help a lot.

Leave a Few Peaches to Enjoy on Young Peach Tree Read More »

Make Your Peaches Larger by Thinning Enough

Readers nectarine tree Q. My 23 year old nectarine is always loaded with fruit. I sent you a picture. I usually “thin” out the fruit when they’re quite small but I can’t seem to thin out enough so they get bigger. Should I remove the flowers now before the fruit forms or wait until the fruit is formed and then attempt to thin out? I know the tree in the picture is ugly but the fruit it bears is delicious. A. I am not concerned with the looks of the tree but I am concerned that it has enough canopy to shade the branches which helps prevent sunburn on the limbs and fruit. Sunburn damage on limbs in turn attracts boring insects and increases the decline of the tree.             Since the leaves are responsible for collecting solar energy and converting this solar energy into chemical energy in the form of sugars, the number of leaves compared to the number of fruit is a pretty critical relationship if you want larger fruit. You want anywhere around 50 to 70 healthy leaves for every good-sized fruit. Peach before thinning             I know you won’t go around counting the leaves to determine the number of fruit to remove but it gives you an idea that if you don’t have a good canopy of leaves, then you will have to remove a lot of fruit.             This is why it is important for your tree to have good canopy development from proper pruning. This allows sunlight to penetrate on to leaves inside the canopy. Leaves growing in shade produce fewer sugars and may actually rob sugars from developing fruit. Peach after thinning             This is why we tell people to leave fruit spaced an average of about 4 to 6 inches apart on the fruit-bearing limbs. Start removing fruit when they are the size of your thumbnail.             I would not remove flowers as an alternative to thinning the fruit. You don’t know which flowers are going to set fruit and which ones will not. You might leave flowers that don’t set any fruit.             Harvest your fruit when they are still firm but have developed their full-color. It is acceptable that there is just a little bit of green left on the fruit at the time of harvest. Depends on the variety.             This helps avoid a lot of bird damage to the fruit. The birds like to get them when the sugar content is starting to climb. Following Murphy’s Law, this is nearly always the day before you decide to pick them. Pick soft fruit at the first sign of bird damage and let undamaged fruit ripen on the kitchen counter for a couple of days. After they ripen, put them in the refrigerator to help preserve their freshness.

Make Your Peaches Larger by Thinning Enough Read More »

Baby Fruit Trees: Pull Off or Leave the Fruit On?

Q. Help! I planted my bareroot Pink Lady last February 4th and now it’s flowering! I’m happy to see the blossoms; they’re pretty and smell good. This is the first time I planted an apple tree, now I don’t know what to do next. Should I just let it blossom and fruit? Pink Lady apple from the North Las Vegas Orchard A. Just be calm and take a deep breath. It is okay for your tree to flower. If you go back to some of the old textbooks on fruit trees it may tell you that some trees take six to eight years to bear fruit. Well there is some truth to that but with newer varieties bred for precociousness (early production) and budded on to dwarfing rootstocks it is not unusual to have fruit trees begin to bear fruit after only a year or two in the ground. The question then becomes is it wise to leave the fruit on the tree or remove it?             Some very good gardeners are of the opinion that all fruit should be removed so that the energy of the tree goes into tree growth rather than split between tree growth and fruit production. Others say to let the tree go ahead and produce some fruit but remove most of it for the same reason.             I am of the latter. If you have some fruit being produced then enjoy a few the first year, a few more the second until you maximize its production for its size. As it increases in size it can be allowed to carry more fruit.             Remember to whitewash the tree to help prevent sunburn. Cover all the branches and the trunk with diluted white latex paint. This is a mixture, 1/1, with water and make sure you cover the west and south sides of the trunk and tops of the branches.             Let it flower. Thin the fruit to one apple per cluster as soon as the fruit forms. Keep mulch at least 6 inches away from the trunk the first few years. Remove the stake this fall. That’s about it. I hope you get a couple of fruit this year.

Baby Fruit Trees: Pull Off or Leave the Fruit On? Read More »