Bigger Peaches Strategy
The bigger peaches strategy is going to get the cobbler or pie on the table. Getting bigger peaches is not about more fertilizer. It is not about chasing the birds away. It is about destruction. Let me explain.
You’ve planted your peach tree. You”ve waited for two years. Every year pulling the immature fruit off the tree to let the tree grow strong. All the while dreaming of peach cobblers and peach pies. Now it’s the third year, you have been waiting for your peaches to ripen and when you go to pick them they are so small? Some of them are barely bigger than the pit. You’ve tried to add more water, more fertilizer, more love only to be rewarded with small peaches. Where have you gone wrong?
No no, it’s not you, it’s the tree
Peach trees are going to try to produce the most fruit that they can. This is so that they can ensure their survival. They don’t care that the fruit is small. They just want a lot of it.
In agriculture and gardening, thinning is the selective removal of flowers, fruits, shoots, and seedlings or young plants to allow adequate space for the remaining organs/plants to grow efficiently.
All peach and nectarine trees require thinning.
When to thin
When to thin depends on the size of the fruit. You want to thin when the fruit is about 3/4″ to 1″ in size for peaches. The fruit will be big enough to be seen clearly yet not so large that you land up wasting the tree’s energy. It is April here in the San Joaquin Valley and my peach tree variety is an early season one. That means that my peaches historically are ready for harvest in late May or Early June. I thin it in early April.
How to thin
How to thin depends on your peach tree. If you have a dwarf variety such as I do then it is very easy to thin by hand. Just run your hand down each branch and thin as you find the young peaches. I pinch or twist off the fruit. Pay special attention to the deformed undersized fruit. I leave one to two peaches per branch(my personal preference). I’m looking for a small harvest of large peaches.
If you have a full-size peach tree and need to reach above your head to get to the branches then you may need a tool. An old wooden broom handle will work. You can pad it if you feel that you will damage the limbs but it is not necessary. Just strike the bunches of peaches to thin them out. A word of caution just knock them down don’t try to knock them out of the park.
How far apart?
Thin late-season fruit from 4 to 5 inches apart. Late season varieties will have a lot more time to grow larger than early varieties. Thin early season fruit from 6 to 8 inches apart.
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(By Sage Ross [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], from Wikimedia Commons)
(By Sage Ross [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], from Wikimedia Commons)
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