Peach tree pruning

[Guineafowl]

Long shot, but is anyone here knowledgeable about this?

It’s in a polytunnel at our new place, fairly established, but neglected. I pruned it quite heavily in early spring to stop it growing through the plastic. Got a few peaches growing on it by pollenating the flowers with a brush.

There are plenty of guides online and in my books, but the pictures look nothing like my tree. I’m supposed to remove ‘water shoots’, but by the look of mine, it’s mostly water shoots. If I’m wrong, I’ll be removing next year’s fruiting wood.

 

[Slowcoach]

I don’t know about peach trees but the water shoots are a result of pruning.
The sap will be rising in spring so not a good time to prune.
Winter or summer is best time to prune fruit trees, I’d remove half the shots in summer.

 

[frank horton]

keep the center open like a wine glass...important for air circ.....
pretty sure the fruit grows on horizontal branches not verticals....
perhaps give it 1/2 a hair cut, enjoy any fruit this year then repeat next year......
I'll take several years to get a nice/good looking fruit bearing tree.....

oh any branches that grow towards the center or cross over another branch....remove them....
if branches rub bark it can lead to infection.....
we just bought some peaches and necterenes....dont expect much for the next few years.....
PLUS FROM MEMEORY.....the peach trees suffered a leaf curling disease, they also went black....just a warning to keep a weather eye out....

here, the locals weight vertical branches down to make em horizontal.....plus they get very agressive with pruning....
pls post photo's.....some of us r interested....lol...

 

[Guineafowl]

Here it is. I pruned it back quite heavily in early spring, as advised in the Fruit Expert (Hessayon).

There are some peaches growing, but they’ve been slow the last couple of weeks:

I think all these green shoots should be cut off:

As per the book, more woody shoots pinched back to six leaves in May:

It seems quite brutal. The pictures look simple, but hard to apply to real life.

 

[gaz1]

you want to start weighting that down so it grows like vines do

2 at the front and 2 to the rear you need to look up peach tree orchards and view there trees they are low to the ground and spread from there but that involves weighting them early

so it looks like a wide flat head top tree bush

 

[Guineafowl]

Right, here’s a before and after. I also asked on a fruit forum, where some of the lads have commercial peach farms out in the US.

Peaches fruit on last year’s wood, so the green shoots you see will fruit next year. You leave any that you want as new branches (see bottom right-hand side), snap off any growing the wrong way (like towards the plastic) and pinch out all others to six leaves, to let the light and air through.