How to Thin Peach Trees in 7 Easy Steps
If you had trouble in the past with bowing branches and other problems related to overcrowded fruit, it’s time to thin out your peach trees! Master naturalist and experienced gardener, Sarah Jay takes you through 7 steps to thin peach trees and give them a bit of breathing room.
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Thinning fruit trees is important for orchards and backyard gardens alike. Doing so promotes larger harvests, reduces bowing branches, prevents breakage, and lowers the likelihood of diseases that occur when fruit is overcrowded. If you grow them, it’s good to know how to thin peach trees. You save yourself a headache down the road.
Thinning occurs during pruning and fruit set. Pay attention during these two phases to ensure there is ample space between the developing fruit and between branches. Open up the tree for better airflow and disease resistance. Space peaches properly to get those plump, juicy harvests.
You should thin peach trees and maintain them throughout the year. It starts in dormancy and continues through summer. Since peaches set fruit once per year, at one fruit per bud, turning your attention toward the tree throughout that time gives you a good sense of how much fruit to expect. Sometimes this involves removing up to half of the fruit from the tree in productive seasons.
Step 1: Start In Winter
Stonefruit are best pruned in dormancy, in late winter or early spring as buds break. This isn’t the only time to prune, but it’s when you first get a sense of where fruit will grow. Each bud has the potential to become a peach, and knowing how these are spaced is the first step to take when you thin peach trees.
Gather your pruning tools and a good pair of gloves. As you prune dead, diseased, or dying wood, crossing branches, and water spouts, look for buds. Then remove those that are less than a couple of inches apart. After you take these off, prune to open the canopy of the tree or obtain your desired shape.
This dormant pruning makes the tree less susceptible to diseases caused by branch wounds. It ultimately funnels more energy away from non-productive branches, into those that bear fruit. Coupled with a good feeding schedule, proper care, and regular irrigation, yields increase when you thin fruit and branches in dormancy.
Step 2: Remove Freeze Damage
Sometimes dormant pruning prompts new red growth on your peach tree that gets disrupted by cold. In this case, before you thin peach trees, it’s necessary to remove the cold damage. A few days after the cold passes, continue pruning, focusing on areas that have blackened due to freeze damage.
Cold-damaged buds won’t produce fruit, so pop those off the tree either by hand or use sterilized pruners to clip whole twigs. The same goes for branches that take on cold damage. The blackened tissue is an indication that nutrients and water are blocked and can’t travel into that area.
If you want to get technical, you can collect shoots with cold-damaged branches and include some of the buds that seem fine from the outside. Then slice open the normal buds. If they have brown centers, they are also frost-damaged. This can help you assess the kind of harvest you’ll have in the coming summer.
Step 3: Locate Young Fruit
As the year goes on, the remaining pollinated buds start to develop small fruits. When they’re about the size of a quarter and below, it’s time to thin them out. You’ve focused on the tree structure up to this point, and now it’s time to thin peach trees by turning your attention to peaches themselves.
Focus first on malformed, diseased, or poorly placed fruit. Leave the healthiest looking ones on the tree. Then any that are closer than six to eight inches apart should be removed. Do this to prevent diseases and poor fruit development that come from overcrowding.
This also helps the tree branches remain upright. Without thinning, fruit trees with regular care get overloaded with weight from increasingly large peaches. This is not only unsightly, it puts your tree at risk. Bowing branches snap under the excess weight, or in storms.
Breakage leads to a higher risk of disease, as wounds open in peak season when pathogens are more active. Bowing alone disrupts the effort you made in pruning and opening up the tree to more sunlight and air. It also has the potential to obstruct nearby areas of the garden, shading out plants when they need sunlight.
Step 4: Remove Excess Fruits
In summer, as your peach tree gets closer to harvest time, remove any other excess peaches that remain on the tree. If you missed a few of those young ones, take off almost-completely mature ones that haven’t ripened yet. They remain in this state, as peaches do not ripen off the tree.
The cool thing about unripe peaches is that they are still edible. It doesn’t matter if you grew a clingstone or freestone peach. Pickle them, poach them, or throw them in a salad. Use them for jam, though they may not have quite as much pectin. The moral of the story here is that as you thin peach trees fruit can still be put to good use, despite being plucked before it’s fully ripe.
Step 5: Try Pole Thinning
Sometimes larger trees are harder to thin, as it’s not as easy to access fruit in higher branches. If you’re dealing with a tall, very established tree, pole thinning is a great way to proceed. Find a good pole and attach thick tape, a tennis ball, cloth, or a short piece of hose. Then aim, and remove excess peaches by hitting them off the tree.
The attachment, whatever you choose, prevents damage to remaining peaches. This technique is best used to thin peach trees with roughly quarter sized fruits, but will still work for larger ones too. Any that fall to the earth should be collected and either tossed in a compost pile, or used in the kitchen.
Unlike other fruit trees, peaches produce seeds that generally breed true to type. That means nearly ripe fruit could produce another peach tree. Extract the seeds and try growing your own to give to a friend or loved one.
Step 6: Prune In Late Summer
Peaches are ready to harvest in late spring through late summer. The timing is largely dependent on your variety and climate, but once you harvest, it’s time to get out the pruners and loppers again. Prune to promote a healthier tree overall, and increase sunlight, air, and nutrient access to the rest of the tree.
Look out for leaf curl, brown rot, cankers, and peach scabs, and remove these parts. To prevent botrytis, remove any fruit that isn’t developing properly or is overripe. This second check-in gives you a better sense of what the form is like when the foliage and fruit are fully out.
At this point, you can see which areas need a little more attention next year. You can also scout for pests, checking for aphids, moths, and stink bugs. These give you an indication as to what to look out for the following summer, and how to prevent their proliferation. It also gives you a better sense of what tasks to take with you as you thin peach trees next year.
Step 7: Follow Up Annually
Repeat this regimen annually for the healthiest, highest yields, and the lowest incidences of pests and disease issues. Remember, the thinning routine is two-tiered, with a focus on both structure and fruit set. Once you get into the groove, you’ll have consistent harvests of delicious, juicy peaches.
