The Problem with Peaches…
Growing up on my parents’ farm out in the country, we had a peach orchard. One year at the end of spring there had been a sale at the local Feed & Seed where they’d marked all the trees they had left to just get rid of them, and my folks bought everything they had. Then we stuck everything in the ground and waited to see what would survive. Pears did okay, apples promptly died, one apricot tree survived, but every peach we planted grew like gangbusters.
It’s a good thing I love peaches because boy did we have a bunch of them. My uncle Calvin would call me Brandywine or Peach Brandy around this time and there’s got to be a inch or two of stunted growth due to my diet primarily being peach-based. It was my job to get a really good crop so I put my back into it.
Getting a Good Crop
First thing you have to remember is how much energy it takes to make a good fruit. We all know plants use sun to change water and carbon dioxide into glucose… which we require for brain function. Eating sweet fruit gave us these big expensive brains.
Not all pollinated flowers survive
My live oak trees are dropping baby acorns everywhere right now. They’re super painful to step on barefoot and all over my yard at the moment. But this is how nature self regulates. If we were having a gentler summer, more acorns would survive to grow to full term. But since it’s hot and dry, the tree has to ration resources. We’ve got plenty of sun but not a whole lot of water so the tree starts culling fruit.
Aborted acorns
Humans bred this trait out of peaches and pretty much the entire stone fruit family. Peach trees can and will kill themselves attempting to grow everything they possibly can. So as the humans who made this mess, it’s our job to come in and selectively cull.
Select no more than one perfect fruit every six to eight inches
The tree only has so many resources. So it’s up to us to decide what we want. Do you want a lot of small, hard fruits? Or do you want a few perfect giants? The tree is going to dump as much of its resources as it can into this crop. You decide what kind of crop you get.
Pruning and Shaping – You can’t thin what you can’t reach.
It’s going to break your heart to do it, but the same day you get that brand new peach tree planted in its perfect little hole, lop it off right around knee height before it sets the first leaves. You are growing a fruit tree… not a shade tree. So you want it more bush-like in order to be able to reach everywhere on it. Pruning it immediately encourages branching nice and low.
Chill hours are changing
Now to get off in the weeds with the problems I’m seeing.
All common fruiting deciduous trees need a period of dormancy in order to set buds. This dormancy is typically around an optimum of 40 degrees F. If the temperature goes above 50 degrees F, the tree breaks dormancy and growth continues. If the temperature goes under 32 degrees F the plant fully shuts down and no chill hours are accumulated.
The total number of chill hours varies from cultivar to cultivar, but selecting the correct range of required chill hours required to the type of winter you usually get is important. If it breaks dormancy too soon, one of those late winter cold fronts can destroy the entire crop.
CHILL HOUR CALCULATION
From October 1st-March 31st:
Total Hours ≥ 32F
+ Total Hours ≤ 50F
If a tree doesn’t get the required chill hours, your bud set will be extremely sparse and the tree’s overall health declines. Think of chill hours as good REM sleep. If you get enough good sleep, you wake up fresh and alert with vigor. If you get crappy sleep over a long period of time, it will affect your health. You’re certainly not in the mood for fun happy reproduction time, you barely have enough energy just to survive.
Chilling hours for northwest Bexar county from October 1st 2023 through March 31st 2024 was 402 hours. Honeycrisp apples, as an example, require 800 – 1000 chill hours. Do you see the problem yet?
So where does that leave us?
As I drive around, I notice all the peach trees around us have been weakening for a while. Or they’re brand new and don’t know better yet / haven’t realized they’re sleep deprived yet. It takes a tree at least three years just to be settled in enough to be able to bear fruit. I want to plant a forest that’s going to be in top production for at least 10 years minimum. So I have to look at trees that don’t need a whole lot of good sleep. And that chill hour number just keeps getting smaller and smaller.
The best answer is always complicated
This whole long article all came about just because I miss having free peaches. But it’s not as easy as just going and buying any old peach tree, or even better, planting a peach pit, unless you have lots of time, energy, and money you’re willing to sacrifice to the variations of your climate and land.
If you want your investment to pay off, you’re going to need to do a little research and time spent in observation of how your land changes over the seasons. I hope my ramblings inspire you to dig a little deeper the next time you see those fruit trees on sale and just take a moment. There’s more to this than meets the eye.