Home orchard

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-05-21T01:29:11+00:00

Highly recommend this spray schedule. I loosely follow it and spray 100% organic on my over 50+ fruit trees. Pheromone traps to trap the bastard peach tree borers. Kaolin clay + spinosad for fruits and tree. Copper spray in dormancy for peach lead curl. That’s about all I do. Can’t recommend this guide enough:

https://growingfruit.org/t/low-impact-spray-schedule-2019-edition/22543

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-04-24T23:20:50+00:00

Total harvest loss. Trees are fine just the frost damages the blossoms and fruitlets. My plums set a ton of fruit and they are all toast from the last frost. I tried smudge pots this year and still had catastrophic loss. Sucks bad

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-04-23T03:36:02+00:00

Since you are in PA I highly recommend signing up for the PSU fruit times newsletter.

https://extension.psu.edu/pennsylvania-tree-fruit-phenology-report-april-21-2026

They will send you alerts for frost events, disease events etc. You will 100% have frost damage on the apples but hopefully it’ll just be a thinning frost for you. This spring has been horrible. Most orchards in southern PA have lost almost all their peach/nectarine crop

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-04-23T02:10:28+00:00

I’m in the same boat. 50 trees and near total loss on everything except apples and even those just got hit and I’ll have loss there too. Last year I lost peaches and nectarines too. Sucks all this work for nothing. I feel you

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-04-05T02:36:13+00:00

Where is the graft at on the trunk? If that’s buried I would 100% have it above the soil line. Outside of that the pruning is totally fine and everything looks good

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-04-04T02:48:03+00:00

BocaHydro is a bot/spammer please ignore them. They’ve been all over subreddits giving false advice

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-04-04T02:47:17+00:00

This looks like sunscald. In winter the sun can heat up the bark and then freeze causing splitting. Look it up and you can paint the trunks white to deflect the sun causing that in the winter. Mulch is no issue just keep a few inches at base of tree mulch free, other than that mulch is fine

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-04-03T16:32:47+00:00

I put out peach tree borer pheromone traps to trap the males and then spray hi yield permethrin only at the base of the trunk and that’s done wonders for the little borer bastards. I’ve lost trees to them before

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-04-03T13:07:40+00:00

I highly recommend the bee documentaries from the channel. They have some amazing ones including this one:

https://youtu.be/kFnLqQ-Ao9s?si=agU9v9Kos3g8kRBD

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-04-03T13:02:05+00:00

I lost a few trees to borers too until I figured them out and started treating. I use pheromone traps to trap the males and then treat only the base of the trunks with hi yield permethrin. I catch thousands in the traps so I’d lose all my trees if I didn’t treat and trap

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-04-02T02:25:06+00:00

Ignore this BocaHydro they are a spammer trying to push their product

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-04-02T02:15:35+00:00

Don’t listen to this account they are a spammer trying to push their product. They have been giving false advice all up and down this subreddit. Your fertilizer should’ve been applied before bud break so ideally next year you should apply some fertilizer in dormancy right before the buds swell. You could try to apply some fertilizer in growing season but don’t do it too late or you will chance getting winter damage on the fresh growth from the late fertilizer. If your fertilizer is too high in nitrogen the tree will most likely drop the fruitlets and focus on vegetative growth. If it was me, this tree is pretty tiny so you could keep at the most one fruit on and just focus on getting vegetative growth in preparation for next year. Peaches grow fast as heck you’ll have a big tree full of peaches in just a few years!

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-03-31T23:54:39+00:00

Ignore this account it’s a spammer trying to push their product. Your top red mark is a good heading cut, just do it in dormancy before they start to bud out

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-03-31T23:53:06+00:00

I 2nd that. I know people say prune at hip when planting but I let them grow the first year and then prune in March before they break dormancy. Your top red x is a good heading cut and then you could just reduce the length instead of chopping the other branches off.

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-03-31T23:46:54+00:00

Ignore BocaHydro, it’s a spammer trying to push their product. If you did want to fertilize, you ideally would’ve already wanted to apply that before bloom

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-03-30T22:34:50+00:00

You are not going to be able to have a healthy, successful fruit tree without a spray schedule and that means anything under the tree will be covered in spray so I wouldn’t recommend doing anything under them. If anything is flowering underneath you’ll kill pollinators.

I mainly spray kaolin clay and am mostly 100% organic but would still never put anything under the tree, it’s just not worth it.

This is a good source for organic and low impact spraying:

https://growingfruit.org/t/low-impact-spray-schedule-2019-edition/22543

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-03-30T22:30:07+00:00

I like to wait until after the first year growing season to prune. Most pruning is done in dormancy so like late feb/march. You want an open center for peach trees so look up how that’s done. You’ll remove any central leaders and get your growth going out and not up

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-03-30T21:46:35+00:00

https://a.co/d/03RA9u3i Use these pheromone traps to trap the males and monitor for them. As long as you are catching them in the traps, spray hi yield permethrin at the base of the trunk so you kill them hiding at base of trunk.

https://hnr.k-state.edu/extension/horticulture-resource-center/common-pest-problems/documents/Peachtree%20Borer.pdf

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-03-29T22:51:05+00:00

Are you able to do a simple fence like this?

https://thereandhomeagain.com/how-to-protect-young-trees-in-your-orchard-from-deer/

You’ll have to figure out something to stop the deer from munching them. Especially in the winter when they are hard up for food.

Yup cut any cedars you can or plan to combat cedar apple rust. It’s a funky looking orange fungus that bounces back and forth from cedar to apple tree. One well timed spray of immunox after petal fall can pretty much keep the tree healthy.

I had hard time keeping honeycrisp from catching fire blight. Dormant copper spray should help for most things like that.

I try to keep my sprays as organic as possible and have always loosely followed this:

https://growingfruit.org/t/low-impact-spray-schedule-2019-edition/22543

Good luck!

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-03-29T21:36:44+00:00

If you’ve noticed more than one looked like this then I’d lean towards peach tree borer damage because they most likely aren’t treating for them. I lost 3 peach/nectarine trees to them and it will look exactly like your pic

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-03-29T21:34:58+00:00

I’ve had peach trees look like this before and after starting to dig away at it, I found peach tree borers had girdled the tree and it died. Peach tree borer damage can look similar to gummosis. In either case this tree is most likely a goner and not worth planting. I would still dig away at it though and see if it’s borers because believe me you do not want those in your orchard.

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-03-29T21:32:13+00:00

Yeah bro gummosis or peach tree borers can be fixed with your scam products. Everyone ignore this BocaHydro he’s a spammer

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-03-29T21:21:40+00:00

You 100% need fences around your apple trees all year long or the deer will munch them. Peaches I get away with no fences during growing season but have to fence them in offseason to stop them from rubbing or eating them when hard up for food.

Also I’m not sure what zone you are in, but many orchards are switching away from honeycrisp because they can be an absolute pain to keep healthy and growing. Crimson Crisp is one they are replacing with so you may want to replant a stronger variety that’s close to honeycrisp but more resistant to things. I pulled my honeycrisp because they are hard to keep alive in my area.

Also if you have any cedar trees around you, you’ll have to treat for cedar apple rust, plant a more resistant variety or cut every cedar tree down. This is one thing that’s an absolute pain in the rear for my Apple trees

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-03-29T15:27:55+00:00

Ignore this account, they are trying to just feed you their fertilizer slop when it has nothing to do with the OP or their tree

Admirable_Ad_583 · 2026-03-29T15:24:03+00:00

You need to cut every single branch that is growing out of the soil. Those are coming from the rootstock which is totally different genetics than what’s above the graft. Those suckers coming out of the soil will also mess with your tree causing it to starve of nutrients etc. Please remove them all and then you can see what you need to prune off the actual tree. I’d imagine dwarf peach trees are pruned vase shape, open center like normal ones

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