How Do You Maintain A Peach Orchard?
Peach trees require a high degree of maintenance, but a crop of juicy fruit in July makes a gardener’s efforts pay off. Provide your peach trees with the basic requirements and you can harvest a highly productive orchard for a dozen years or more before the trees pass their peak. Plant a cover crop of rye or vetch in the fall to reduce competition from weeds. Till this cover crop in the spring to add nutrients to the soil. Fertilize the peach trees in the fall. You can use an inorganic 10-10-10 fertilizer, or you can spread bone meal or compost around the drip line of the tree. Prune the peach trees back in the late winter. Prune the branches in herringbone fashion, which maximizes the sunlight that reaches each branch. Remove suckers and crossing branches while pruning. Thin excess peaches twice in the early stages of growth. Remove about half of the peaches on the tree when they are pea-sized and thin the fruits again when they are walnut-sized, leaving about 10 peaches per branch. W
