How to Grow Peaches Organically - Complete Growing Guide

Well, hello everyone. And welcome to another very exciting, complete growing guide here on the Mi Gardener channel. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about peaches. Now, peaches are my favorite fruit to grow. I absolutely recommend everybody try them. If you have the space, it is certainly something that is not only very satisfying, but extremely delicious. Oh my goodness. There is nothing better than a fresh homegrown peach. They're so juicy, so delicious. Oh my gosh. There's just absolutely nothing that comes close, in my opinion, at least. So, how to grow peaches. So oftentimes people, they just assume peaches are like every other fruit that needs a cross. And as we'll talk about in these growing guides, lots of other fruit trees need crosses. Not the case with peaches. Peaches are pretty much self-fertile. What self-fertile means is that they will produce fruit with only one tree and they don't need another tree to cross-pollinate with to increase production. So that's very, very convenient for you, so you don't have to worry about it. Now, in our case, we are growing three, but we don't need two. We can do just fine with one. I just happen to enjoy them so much, I planted three. Now, when planting, you want to make sure that you dig a hole about two and a half times the depth. So I'm assuming everyone here is getting ready to plant fruit trees and that's why you're figuring out how to grow them before you get them. So I think that's wise to have that knowledge built up. So whether or not you get bare root or in a pot from a nursery, this will apply. You need to make sure that you prepare the hole two and a half times the size of the root ball. Make sure that the soil is very loose, well-draining, filled with organic matter, and make sure that it is something that the roots can go up quickly. And because it's a deciduous tree, it needs to actually prepare itself for winter, prepare itself to go into dormancy, and it needs to get its roots past that frost zone where the sugars that are created through photosynthesis can go down, be stored, so that it can come out of dormancy in the springtime. So it's very, very important because if the roots just stay up really close to the top of the soil, you can bet your bottom dollar they're gonna die and they're not gonna come back in the spring. So the next thing I wanted to talk about was fertilizing. So when it comes to fertilizing, it also ties into when you first plant. You want to make sure that you do not fertilize them very heavily when you're first planting for the first three months. Reason being is we want to encourage that root growth. If you have good root growth, you can pretty much guarantee the tree is going to do well and survive. If you just feed the plant right at the base, it's not going to encourage those roots to go out. So I always say this, when you first plant a fruit tree, for the first fruit set, you want to make sure that you apply a very gentle 2-0-0. I use worm castings and I also make worm teat, and that's what I feed my fruit trees for the first three months, just because I don't want to risk them not moving out. If you feed them right at the base, they will just stay right there, because roots, their only job is to go find nutrients and water. So if you give them the nutrients right at the base, they're not encouraged to go out and find any. Now, I do that because I want to pull the tree out of dormancy. I want to get boost growth for the year. Fruit production is not my concern with peach trees. Reason being is because peach flowers will actually bloom on new growth. So it's actually advantageous to increase the growth on the peach trees, because if you can boost the growth, you can later guarantee having more fruit production. So it kind of goes hand in hand. So you want to pull it out of dormancy as quickly as possible to increase that new growth. And then the next year, there'll be loads of flowers on all that new growth. So I consider fruit a kind of a secondary thing, because it will come when you take care of the tree well. And so then, after we've done our first initial feeding of a 200, which is a really gentle nitrogen-based fertilizer, you want to make sure that you fertilize in the fall as well. So around October time, when the leaves start changing, very, very, very crucial. Now, we're definitely past those three months, because right now it's April. So in October, after three months have passed, clearly, you can go buy and apply a very high phosphorus fertilizer. What that's going to do, it's going to prepare the root system. It's going to encourage root growth. And it's going to not necessarily focus as much on leaf production, obviously, because the plant's getting ready to go dormant. So it already knows, hey, I don't need to do much growing. I'm not going to take much nitrogen, but I am going to take lots of phosphorus. And it's going to push those roots down very nice and far, encourage that additional last little push to prepare the plant for dormancy. And then you don't have to worry about it until spring again. So only two fertilizings is perfect. You can fertilize more with a gentle fertilizer throughout the season, if you wish to do so. I've totally found it to be kind of redundant. It really does not, because there's two big growth pushes, once in the spring, once in the fall. After that, it's really not a whole lot of growth. So, and you're going to find that to be true with most of your fruit trees, to be honest. So the next thing is with the fact that it produces fruit on new branches, what I always stress is pruning heavily. Now, pruning heavily is something that not a lot of gardeners like to do, because they kind of say, oh no, I just had all that new growth. I just had all this, you know, all this growth, but why would I want to cut it back? Well, the reason why you want to cut it back is because you want to cut back old growth. So that's the difference. You don't have to take out any of that new growth. What I would consider is pruning out some of that old growth that will focus more energy into producing more new growth. So it will really expedite how many flowers you get the following year. So remember, everything that you do to prune this year will help next year's fruit production. I think a lot of times people assume that anytime they see new growth, they're going to instantly see flowers on that new growth. It's not the case. That new growth won't produce flowers until the following spring. So just keep that in mind, but it definitely helps you. It's kind of a good reward for taking care of your tree. That's kind of what I say. The next thing is make sure that you're watering adequately. Fruit trees, peach trees are very, very prone to drying out. They need a lot more water than most of your other fruit trees, and I typically say, so we say this for all of our transplanted, freshly transplanted trees. The first three weeks, give them one gallon a day. It seems excessive. They will definitely benefit. After the three weeks, the following two weeks, you want to give them a gallon every other day. And then after those two weeks, you want to give them a gallon a week. However, what you'll find is that during the hot season, if it goes above 90 degrees, if it goes above 90 degrees, you need to go back to watering a gallon a day. And the reason is because fruit trees, or not fruit trees, most of your fruit trees will be fine. Peach trees are the exception to that, that you will find that they die off at the top. They'll have a lot of top die off that will just wilt and wither and die. And that's because the fruit tree overheats. And I'm not quite sure why peach trees are so susceptible to it versus other trees, but I've seen it happen. It's a plague that attacks so many fruit tree, so many of these peach trees, and you just want to prevent that. And how I've been able to prevent it on my trees is by giving them a very adequate amount of water. And that seems to do just fine. It's really just the stress that they start dropping those leaves because the plant just kind of feels like it's being attacked. And so it will reduce the amount of leaves that it has and the amount of branches that it has to take care of so that it can kind of conserve that moisture. And that's really kind of why. And then finally, when it comes to pH, it's very, very important to make sure you have a pH neutral. So we make sure, well, our soil is pretty clay around here. Some areas are better than others, but this hole actually was quite good. That hole over there for that peach tree is quite good. However, that tree right there had pretty heavy clay. So it kind of depends on our yard. But for the most part, we just apply compost because compost will act as a pH buffer of seven. So that's what you need for peach trees. They don't like a lot of acidic. They don't like a lot of alkaline. They just like a really good, loamy, rich, organic matter soil of a pH of seven. And so they're pretty easy to take care of. Just make sure, again, that you prune out that old growth. You can see old growth because old growth will have bark. So that's, oh, that's one thing I did not mention. Dang it. Okay, so going back to the pruning. When you're looking to prune old growth versus new growth, a lot of times people say, I don't know what to prune. So I'm gonna show you really quick in here, a quick demonstration. So come in close. I'll show you what old growth versus new growth looks like. You can actually see, because I got loaded up with flowers, which is gonna be great for production. And it's gonna be a good peach year, I think. So come on and check this out. I'll show you the new growth versus old growth, and that'll help you better identify what you need to be pruning. All right, so as you can see, we have the main growth point here. Now, at some point, I will come and I will prune this off because we wanna stop the upward growth and encourage more lateral growth. You'll wanna do this with all your peach trees. As you can see over here with this peach tree, this peach tree's already had it done. It's very, very nice, very, very nicely pruned. So you prune it here, and you have this nice goblet shape, and that allows you to have very good load-bearing weight on your branches. It encourages more lateral growth than upward growth, and it allows you to harvest easier as well. So it just makes it very nice and compact. For the home garden, that's essential. So we are gonna go back and prune this, but for the most part, you don't wanna touch this main growth stem here unless you're pruning some upward growth. Now, what I was pointing out with new growth versus old growth, you can see here the bark forms on this branch. It was pruned, and it formed new growth. New growth is typically what always is on peach trees, kind of a reddish purple, very beautiful. I don't know if you can see that there. Lighting's not the best, but it's a very beautiful reddish, nice burgundy color, I would say. And that is all your new growth, and you'll find that on the new growth, you'll have fruiting buds. So beautiful, beautiful fruiting buds. So the next thing is that after it fruits, what you'll wanna do is kinda just remember, okay, so I'm gonna start looking for the bark. When the bark starts forming, you wanna basically, what you wanna do is prune about half that branch off because you wanna leave some of it to produce some new growth on these branches. Don't prune off the whole thing. Prune off about half of it, and that's going to encourage some new lateral growth. This growth tip will no longer be active. It's gonna push that new growth out throughout this year, and then the next spring, it's going to start fruiting. So we'll do some more follow-up videos on when we start pruning these after they're done fruiting and stuff like that, but it's generally kind of a, it's an art form. You definitely have to make sure you don't prune too much, but also make sure you prune enough to encourage that lateral growth for the following year. So there you go. There is all you need to know about growing peaches. Hopefully you all enjoyed. If you do have any questions, post them in the comments box below. Make sure to check out our whole playlist on all our other growing guides that we've done. Also make sure to check out migardener.com. You can see so much more over there, including all of our playlists that we have. Definitely a wealth of information. Tons of free information over there, including our store and stuff that you can check out. That's always, always fun to browse. So hopefully you all are having a great day. Make sure you get out in the garden. Make sure you're growing bigger, going home. And this is Luke from the Mi Gardener channel. I'll catch you later. See ya. Bye.