Leave a Few Peaches to Enjoy on Young Peach Tree

Q. I don't know how old my peach tree is. I assume it's really young, like two or three years old because it is small. I am pinching off the small peach fruits leaving one small fruit every 4-6 inches along the branch. For this tree, that ends up being one to 2 peaches per branch, giving me overall maybe 10 peaches on this young tree.

A. Your thinning of the fruit sounds about right for the age of your tree. There are some people who pull all of the fruit off of a young tree hoping to get the tree into greater production beginning in its fourth year of growth.

            It doesn't really matter. I like to have a few fruit from young trees, an incentive for my labor. It won’t hurt the tree to have it produce fruit early.

            If your tree is really healthy and puts on a lot of new growth this and the following year then you should increase fruit production 300 to 400% over the next two years. You should be nearing full production by the fourth or fifth year if you are watering, fertilizing and pruning adequately.

            You will prune your tree in December or January. Look for my pruning videos on YouTube under the name of Extremehort. This should help a lot.