Small Peaches for two years--want to figure it out this year!

14 years ago

This is the third year that our peach tree will bear fruit. Both of the previous years we've ended up with delicious, but very small fruit. Golf ball sized. I'd love to figure out what I'm doing wrong and get larger fruit this year.

The first year I discovered that my husband had turned off all irrigation to the yard for all of March and April (we had a busted sprinkler head, and he kept "forgetting" to fix it and turn the irrigation back on). I suspected that was the reason we had small peaches the first year.

Second year, the tree set pretty lightly. I later learned that was because I hadn't pruned it at the appropriate time. Still, I thinned the fruit appropriately to encourage larger fruits. Irrigation was on, plus I gave it occasional nice, deep waterings with the hose. I don't believe it lacked for adequate water. Fruit was perhaps slightly larger, but still only golf-ball sized.

This year there's tons of beautiful fruit on the tree, and it's growing rapidly, but unless I do something differently, I suspect I'm going to get the same small-fruit results. I thinned aggressively this year (it set heavily) and have checked the irrigation. What else can I do? What am I missing?

Comments (5)

turtleman49
14 years ago
If you've "Properly" pruned and thinned your tree and carry out irrigation and fertilization programs you should be fine. Unless it a EarlyGrande Peach, which set a smaller sized fruit in the first place..
Two Questions;
What Rootstock is it on?
Do you carry out a spray schedule?

Here is a link that might be useful: All I Grow is Fruit Trees
lazy_gardens
14 years ago
If you have thinned aggressively and have the watering set to optimal ... you WAIT!

that's the hard part, waiting to see if it's going to work.
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thisisme
14 years ago
I assume you are now....

1) Pruning during the late Winter months.

2) Fertilizing or composting and mulching.

3) Have them on a deep watering schedule.

4) Thinning when they are roughly nickle to quarter size.

5) You don't have Peach Leaf Curl or some other obvious disease or infestation.

If you are doing all of those things you wait and see how it turns out.

I would love to see a picture of your tree.

I have a tree (Florida Prince) I planted three years ago in a 25 gallon pot. I expect to harvest roughly 40 large juicy peaches from it the 1st week of May.
greenthumbjeff
14 years ago
It also depends on the overall size of your tree. If it's still pretty small, you will definitely need to thin the fruit very heavily, since the tree doesn't have enough energy yet.

Otherwise, it sounds like you should get some regular-sized fruit this year, especially with all of the rain we got this year.

Good luck!

Jeff
modthyrth
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks for the help, everyone. I'll try to get a picture of the tree tomorrow and post it for review/comments/advice.

Some thoughts based on comments:
--I didn't actually prune it this year. I'd read to prune it after leaf-drop, and it never really dropped all its leaves this year. And by the time I realized that, I was worried it was too late.
--I fed the tree a fertilizer they gave me at the nursery. It was Moon Valley, and I have to say I'm stunningly dissapointed with every other part of my interaction, so I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it's not the right product.
--Deep watering, check.
--Thinning, check. But since it's still not a big guy, perhaps I wasn't being quite aggressive enough.
--No leaf curl. Though I believe I did have that last year. Moon valley said it was thrip, but it really, really looked like leaf curl to me.