Thinning my peach tree to improve yield and health of the tree
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- čas přidán 8. 06. 2021
- Sometimes it helps to watch someone do something. There are more than a few reasons why thinning fruit can be beneficial to your tree, so let's go over some and do this together. Have any other reasons? Let us all know in the comments!
My peach varieties: Reliance (this tree shown here), Contender, Frost, Veteran, Madison, Harrow Diamond, Flamin' Fury, Raritan Rose.
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permaculture geek combined with engineer geek. Nice :D
Geekus permaculturalis x physikus
Came for peaches, stayed for physics lesson.
@@abdullahvonsnarkenson2442 yeah, I plan on watching it again with my kids just for the physics!
We need this taught in our schools. Greenhouses & Permaculture education.
Ecosystems.
Get our future generations interested & educated.👩🏻🌾🇨🇦
🌻🐝💨🤓ThankÜ
I couldn't agree more.
I spoke to my boys principal...short version. They are building a new ‘super school’, jk-12.
I requested a greenhouse in the build. She agreed, loved the idea. I’m going to join the committee. Hopefully we can do plant sales & eventually Farmers Markets...putting money back into the program.
Apiculture too?
🌻🐝💨🤞🏼
Wow! Build some kids who may want to start an apiary
Nothing lacking in this video! It's very inclusive of potential issues and remedies, particularly appreciate the assurance of pulling fruit off! The reasoning helps very much. Thanks for the detailed video, I feel no need to search for more information!
No boredom here! And I love the practical, physics-based reason for thinning which fruits. Thanks, as always, for all the knowledge you share!
Thanks!
Yeah, the geek-ness of this really appeals to me! Guess I’m a member of the geek club! I always like to know the science behind what I need to do. Thanks for the video.
Great video and timely as well for many. I thinned over 5,000 on four 3 yr old trees last yr and at over 3,000 this yr. I also remove the curled leaves but didn't know about touching other leaves with hands. So much work but so worth it! Really appreciate you sharing your knowledge. 👍🌱🍑
Thank you :)
In some areas, rain can also be a prime condition to spread fireblight. We have a lot of folks in our area having severe fireblight problems in apple / pear trees as we have the perfect combination of conditions right now. Hail damage from prior thunderstorms (got up over 1" in several areas), warm nighttime temperatures (~55+ deg F), occasional precipitation due to our monsoon rains. Super glad I put in all fireblight resistant varieties, I haven't seen anything on my trees yet. Debating whether I need to go apply copper fungicide to the hail damaged areas of my trees...
One thing I have learned about the tender art of gardening; it is necessary to become RUTHLESS!
Haha! So true. My first season I teased apart tomato starts because I didn't want to lose any plants. Of course doing so, I did so much root damage that I basically killed every single plant. Now it's just a quick look at 2 seedlings: you are stronger you live, you are weaker, you die.
On the fruit trees I've planted more recently, I've been pretty good at training the main scaffold branches (open center type) to maybe 30-45 degrees above horizontal. It makes sense once you think about how the fruit (or snow) loads up. A very upright branch picks up a much longer moment arm, further in the displacement. If you start with a branch that's fairly horizontal, it's going to develop stronger crotches and for a similar load the branch will not have to go through as much bending / angular displacement, due to the moment arm being more consistent from fruit on the branch.
I also thin the most at the branch tips, it makes complete sense :)
Oooooh keep talkin dirty to me
Such a simple video but so very valuable. I did not expect such good information in this video.
Glad it was helpful!
I greatly appreciated the timing on this video. We inherited a very neglected peach tree when we moved in here a couple months ago. The main trunk is dead and rotted… but yet the tree is a super heavy producer! I was considering pulling off some fruit anyway because I wasn’t sure this poor sick tree could support all that. I feel much better about it now, and I will go thin it right now! Also had no idea about peach leaf curl, Will definitely look out for that as well. Thank you!
Good stuff
Great advice! I very much appreciate my apples that self-thin and do their own June Fruit Drop, but I have to hand-thin my peaches (for me, that's in May), and it's so hard to remove fruit!
Yes it's good to see this . Good learning points.
Thanks Lilian
This is an amazing video thank you so much. I'm having my first experience with peach trees. I went out and thinned this year, but I don't think I did enough. I pulled over 200 peaches off the tree when thinning, and I still don't think I got enough. The tree just looks so heavy to me right now
you have to pull off about 80%..
I must say Keith after watching this I went out to my trees and saw that I did not thin enough. Been at it for an hour and needed to take a break then back at it with the hands a going. I must say now armed with a bit more information I don't feel the guilt anymore picking them off. I pick with knowing that the peaches with be bigger, tastier and with less stress on our trees. Thank you again for stressing important points! Glad I only found a few leaves with the curl also. 🍑🌱👍
Wonderful! I'm glad this helps - it seems from the comments here that it helped many many people. Very timely. Yes indeed, the biggest thing about the practice of thinning is that it provides NEGATIVE reinforcement during the time you do it. Not only because it feels bad to pull fruit off, but mostly because the single biggest reason to thin is actually for NEXT season's harvest. You can either get a ton of mediocre sized peaches this year and none the next year, or you can get less fruit, (but honestly just as much or more "meat") by thinning. But at least you should get a great harvest next year also.
If you don't thin, you may get rewarded this year. But then may enter a season or two recovery. That's the hard part - you get rewarded for doing the wrong thing. So much of human existence and the problems we face today echoes that similar theme. Being rewarded in the short term by selling the future down the river (and worse, often not even knowing that's what we're doing, we ONLY see the reward).
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy do you mean negative punishment? (Removal of a pleasant stimulus) I don't see a negative reward in there (removal of an aversive stimulus) but maybe I just misunderstood you
I meant negative reward. Sometimes not thinning the tree gives you lots of small fruit, but sometimes in a rainy season the tree can kind of manage it and make a massive harvest. The grower is happy. But it taxes the tree tremendously and the cost isn't paid until next year when you get nothing as the tree recovers from the previous season.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy sorry I completely misunderstood you I was abit confused about what you were trying to say. Thanks a lot for the clarification
Definitely my fault !
Going to try making pickled peaches with all those babies. Such a waste to throw away.
Planted my mini food forest this year, and while my lone peach tree didn’t get any fruit this year, I’m going to be checking for leaf curl regularly. Your channel has been so informative and keeps inspiring me to dive further down the permaculture rabbit hole.
Amazing, thank you 😊
Thank you. So helpful and informative!!
Thanks for watching :)
Perfect timing! My peach trees have much more fruit than they ever have this year. Thanks
Perfect!
Been doing this myself recently, it's crazy how much they try to put on! As always thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience!
Yeah, it's crazy.
Have you tried painting chalk onto the bark during the time when the moth is spreading, breeding and laing eggs? That help me out here. Go tips in this video. Lot's of love from Sweden!
No I didn't, but I did whitewash with lime paint this year. I'm curious if that would have helped at all (it is chalky) - probably not, it would need to be fresh?
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I kind of paint more chalk during the whole season. Very important when the are breeding and egglaying. I start in the spring and reparation after rainfall or evey othet week from spring to frost in the autumn. It has hrlped and the trees are not as effekted as before. Hope this might help you in the future. I need to find other ways to do this. Since I've go e from 5 trees to well over 200 after the moved to my homestead. I plant as much as I can be sowing and making cuttings.
Thank you for this information Yasmin.
Hi 👍
Good morning!
💜
It has been determined a tree does not push sap rather the leaves evaporating moisture create a vacuum pulling sap to the extremities of the tree.
Is that true? Sap runs before leaves are out in many species.
What about shortening those skinny branches during growing Season so that you don't have that problem?
Great video, excellent timing, I was at a friend's house yesterday and we were discussing peach leaf curl and thinning peaches (we are in Maine, similar timing)! I also pull my peach leaf curled leaves and put them in my pocket to throw into trash so they don't further spread fungus - however I haven't been washing my hands after (oops!!) I'm wondering if there's an easy way to sanitize in the field (it's a long trip back to the house). I use IPA when pruning to clean tools to prevent diseast spread - I'm not a fan of hand sanitizer but I'm wondering if it might be worthwhile just for this use? Or (hopefully) maybe you have another better suggestion? Thanks!
To be honestly I'm not entirely sure. For example, an anti-bacterial hand sanitizer is likely to be ineffective against the fungus that causes this. Infact, part of the reason this is so problematic is that there aren't really that many things that DO work against it. Some people spray copper fungicide on trees, but that's more of a preventative thing I believe. And Poppy did that last year (twice, and lots) and his trees are worse than mine now (much more so).
Short answer is I'm not really sure anything other than a hose will do much. It's the scrubbing/washing action that you want, so if you have any way to do that in the field then try that. Also what I try to do is use one hand to pick the leaves, try not to touch them as much as possible (i.e. pinch below any affected area), then remove the leaf and put into a bucket. If you can keep one hand pretty clean (the picking hand) as you go, then you can probably "do your best" in that way.
Thanks so much for this video! Such great info here! I planted a couple of nectarine trees this spring and I’m wondering if they too suffer from the leaf curl, or if it’s only peach trees.
I don't know for sure, but I would think Nectarines and Apricots would be susceptible too.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy And almond trees. I used to get a little bit of it on my old almond.
Can I thin by removing blossoms or should I wait until the fruit begins to grow? Thank you very much for the information and video.
I would wait for fruit set. Sometimes you get a ton of blossoms but no fruit at all. Removing blossoms is like treating a problem before you even know you have a problem. You may have the opposite problem (poor polination) and be taking the opposite action for what you want.
Thanks for the video, your tree was just loaded! I’m new to this peach tree stuff, my peach tree I planted last year looked so beautiful and had so many bright green leaves, then we had weeks of rain and when I went out and was checking things out it was loaded with peach leaf curl and had lost a lot of the leaves. I’m so upset about it. Now after watching your video I know to get out there early on( between rain storms here in Washington State) and check for any leaf curl. My apple tree is doing good I took all the apples off because it’s the first year for that one too. Just wondering if that leaf curl will transfer to apples, pears or apricots?
No it only impacts peaches.
One nice thing about it impacting every leaf on the tree, is that hopefully if it loses them all at the same time, and you can get rid of them all, then the new growth hopefully will be okay. It will stress the tree a bit but it should be okay.
Another thing that can help is if you do plant a polyculture around it. Sometimes fallen leaves will deposit spores on the ground. Having plants around the tree can therefore help prevent rain from hitting the soils and splashing spores up.
Don't lose hope. I accidentally bought an infected tree which then went on to infect just about everything else in the peach family. I regularly removed all infected leaves every year since and now I only see one or two.
If you're careful and clean always, it does pay off and infection rates drop.
I've got one tree in particular that had bad curl earlier in the season. It's now showing a fair amount of new healthy growth and there are dead leaves all over the ground. Should I rake those up and remove them from the site? Any more advice on dealing with curl in general? The two trees next to it have only a very mild problem and I'm wondering if they are simply more resistant genetically or if it just hasn't spread yet...
There are definitely peach leaf curl resistant varieties. I picked up a variety called Flamin' Fury and it's supposed to be very resistant. We'll see.
Other than that, just remove any affected leaves and keep them from growing on the tree to the best of your ability. Some people say that once it's on the site, you don't even need to remove the leaves or be careful touching the tree and spreading it everywhere because it's already everywhere. I don't know how true that is because what I'm doing is seeming to work. Maybe I'm just lucky, I don't know. I can see their point though, and conceptually it makes sense to me. It's 1 cell wall thick, so it's likely everywhere already. Still, I remove them because it's working.
Some people spray copper fungicide on them, but anyone I know that did that, they have a worse problem now than I do (and we were comparable before they sprayed).
I lost all my peach trees a few years ago and starting over again now with my pair trees when I pick some leaves off I don't get the discolouring of the pairs is this true for peaches should I pick a couple leaves away from the fruit so there's no rubbing or darkening from the Sun
Not unless there is curl.
Can u thin mid summer? Or is it too late?
Great explanation.
Which variety would you recommend I'm in Zone 5.
My favorite so far is Reliance. What a tasty peach.
Contender good to -40
Do you just get a ladder for branches that are out of reach? Great video
I can yes, still haven't yet. I'm also going to completely leave the bottom peach tree alone (in my "wild garden") as an experiment to see what the difference is - both for this year's harvest and next. I'm all for science projects.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy That sounds awesome, especially if you could manage some quantitative data from it, like total peaches and meat/peach
That's a great idea, but I would need to trees in ideal conditions. I can't control the variables, so I can make observations of course, but will have to understand that there are many factors at play. Most especially is sun hours and water variances. This garden up top is full sun, with land sloping towards it and garden on contour that holds water. My lower land (where the more neglected tree is located) is flat and shady.
I’m wondering if spraying peach trees with compost tea also spreads curl the way rain does? I’m hoping to plant a peach tree soon. Thank you for the video!
Also, I inherited a large apple tree and I’m noticing something looking off with some leaves on the end of branches. Almost looks like a type of curl with drying out. Do you know how I can learn about helping my apple tree? The previous owners sprayed twice a year pesticides to keep…….I believe, the coddling moth away?
I would think so yes. But I would also not spray trees when they are setting fruit like right now. The last thing you want right now is the tree to get a bunch of nitrogen (most compost teas are relatively heavy in nitrogen) and try to grow a bunch of leaves with that nitrogen. I suppose, unless your tree just lost all it's leaves to curl.
However, there is an interesting paper out there comparing the nutritional benefits of various compost teas... lets see if I can dig it up, and if youtube doesn't block this comment because I'm linking externally.... here: www.researchgate.net/publication/325078608_The_Nutrient_Content_of_Organic_Liquid_Fertilizers_in_Zimbabwe. In section 3 of that paper, pigweed (i.e. amaranth) tested actually quite low in Nitrogen but high in potassium and phosphorous, which is actually what you would want to spray trees with during fruiting. So it's possible that growing an amaranth patch and fertilizing with THAT liquid fertilizer could be very good during fruit set. I should probably make a video about that.
For the apple question, it's impossible to answer without a picture (and honestly I may not be knowledgable enough in that specific area regardless). I just know that apples tend to look like crap. The tree gets hit by so many diseases, so many pests eat the leaves, but they just keep chugging through and producing. Many of the problems (coddling moth, cedar rust, etc) have no solution. People may say cedar rust can be sprayed off, but that's just not a practice I'm getting into (that's literally why I'm growing my own food, so I'm not consuming chemicals), and the cedar rust overwinters in cedars so you'll just get it again on the next wind.
For apples specifically, I think doing nothing and seeing if it ACTUALLY impacts your fruit set and harvest is a good idea. Often doing nothing is the correct decision. And sometimes it takes years of doing nothing for the solution to present itself (coddling moth is a great example of this - as you need to attract their predators and that can take a few seasons before those predators start laying eggs in your soil and breaking the pest cycle at the larval stage - which is the only solution).
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy
Thank you so much for your reply. It’s clear I need to begin researching on fruit trees, as I know next to nothing at the moment. Doing nothing right now is right up my ally 🤣
I do remember your video on waiting for the predators to come around and that taking time. I was so fascinated with the concept that people have had to hear me going on and on about it (well only my gardening friends 😊)
I will take a look at the article…..that’s interesting…..and I love to grow Amaranth 😊
Thank you again 👍
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy
What a great article that is. I love that it’s being looked at to use plants that are a nuisance in the area for nutrition that’s good for the land. And it’s growing in abundance and free. Usually the problem is the solution in nature and is right under our feet, if we can just get out of our own way.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I think the premise behind the foliar application of compost tea in this case is not to fertilize, but to introduce diverse biology that will help combat the over zealous pathogens and to keep them in check. I am still learning but recently had a rose rust fungus, and applied a homemade compost tea spray (made of Geoff Lawton's 18 day compost. Chicken poop, leaves, and forest floor) Within a week there were visibly less spores. I checked again today and only maybe 5% remain. Again, I have lots to learn but I do think there's merit to the principal. :) And as always... keep observing and adjusting. Food for thought. Ps - thanks for the link. Using certain plants to get different nutrient profiles in compost is somewhat similar in principal to KNF (Korean Natural Farming).
Indeed, great points thanks thanks adding them.
So much woodchiparea...
What type of peach is it?
I have updated the description of the video with all my varieites. Thanks for the comment
Spraying with algae or something?
Do you spray them 2 not get fungus?
Nope, I don't spray anything ever.
Thin thm out otherwise they will def break!
This was like watching a depressed onion cut itself. So sad.
Even more sad is how many things we've made genetically hazardous just for our own ascetics and greed. This species of tree sound like the pug of the tree world.
LOL this comment is perfect and completely accurate.