Peach tree blooming?

[ChelswannabeGT]

My moms tree is young still and in South Carolina. It has no leaves on it yet but all these pink buds starting to bloom. I thought leaves were supposed to come first or is this just normal of a young peach tree?

 

[treeguy]

Enjoy it while you can, they are short-lived.

 

[ChelswannabeGT]

Enjoy it while you can, they are short-lived.

Yeah but why would it bloom and there’s no leaves on the tree?

 

[DirtMechanic]

Its a birds and bees thing. They have stored energy in the roots, and a little fruit to grow over the season. Think of the leaves as a good job one might aquire after the first child comes along.

 

[Meadowlark]

That's normal on most all fruit trees.

This link describes the process in some detail:

Stages of Peach Trees

There are four main phases of peach tree development: the dormant phase, the flowering phase, the fruit phase and the harvest. Each of these phases have additional stages of development.

www.gardenguides.com

 

[DirtMechanic]

And..drum roll please...there needs to be a spraying program to go with the stages. Everything likes eating peaches!

 

[ChelswannabeGT]

And..drum roll please...there needs to be a spraying program to go with the stages. Everything likes eating peaches!

What’s best spray

 

[DirtMechanic]

Generally, these are The Rules. But there are many preferences folks develop in what they like to use and how they like to use them.

 

[alp]

My moms tree is young still and in South Carolina. It has no leaves on it yet but all these pink buds starting to bloom. I thought leaves were supposed to come first or is this just normal of a young peach tree?

Same here! I have two nectarine trees coming into flowers. Very lovely pink and no leaves. So don't worry. Having said that, if I have a cold spell, I would remove them into my sun lounge. A lot of plants have flowers before they have leaves. I think if there is a cold snap, it could be catastrophic for the flowers as they might be snapped or killed by the frost or even snow.

 

[DirtMechanic]

Same here! I have two nectarine trees coming into flowers. Very lovely pink and no leaves. So don't worry. Having said that, if I have a cold spell, I would remove them into my sun lounge. A lot of plants have flowers before they have leaves. I think if there is a cold snap, it could be catastrophic for the flowers as they might be snapped or killed by the frost or even snow.

It would be nice to have such a sunny room! Here, the peaches are all hardy and in the ground. The false spring effect causes trouble. It is to be 23f next week after a long period of +70f that allowed blooming and no buds will survive.

 

[Chuck]

Don't worry. The blooms and baby peaches will soon be gone. It's gonna freeze again and you will have to wait until next year for them. Not to worry, you will have lots of leaves shortly.

 

[Chuck]

What’s best spray

Peaches are labor intensive. You need different sprays for different things. Depending on which problem is prevalent in your area I will try to explain the broad overview of growing peaches. Your tree is up and growing so you don't want anything to interfere with it. The first thing is to kill any over wintering insects that live in the bark of the tree and to kill any eggs layed there. I do this before the buds form. For this I like to use neem oil but any horticultural oil is fine. Then just before the buds open I spray again with neem. This second spraying may not be necessary but I always do it just to make sure. Now here is the most important step, thinning. I thin my peaches before leaf emergence. I cut off entire branches. One to keep the tree free of any horizontal branches but also to keep the tree "balanced" and in doing so I remove at least 1/2 of the blooms. After this is done and just before the sun sets I spray the tree with a spinosad based insecticide and during the coming weeks I constantly inspect my trees for any and all insects, especially hard scale insects. If I see any scale I use neem. If I see other types of insects starting to multiply I use spinosad. If I see ANY caterpillars I spray with Bt. This is just a basic "how to" in growing peaches and different areas probably have slightly different methods but if you do the above you should be OK

 

[Meadowlark]

Labor intensive if you choose...or I guess commercial. I never spray mine, never. About the only thing I do is prune for open centers and mulch with old hay.

The birds get some and yes the bugs get a few, but hey we enjoy what we get and hope the B&B do also.

 

[Chuck]

Labor intensive if you choose...or I guess commercial. I never spray mine, never. About the only thing I do is prune for open centers and mulch with old hay.

The birds get some and yes the bugs get a few, but hey we enjoy what we get and hope the B&B do also.

You never get scale or stinkbugs? Here it's just about every year. I am not commercial but do have 22 trees but many are getting old and don't have much life left. They are all around 13-16 years old. I prune heavily because I like large fruit and if I didn't prune 50% all I would have are lot of mostly seed peaches. I grow Sam Houston, June Gold and Elberta but being as my trees are getting old I think I am going to change to a later but still low chilling hour variety.

 

[DirtMechanic]

@ChelswannabeGT -I rest my case. I know you had no idea sweetie!