How to Grow Peach Trees: A Detailed Guide to Planting Methods and Management Essentials

Peaches have relatively high nutritional value and beauty-enhancing benefits, and they are very popular in the market. So how do you grow peaches?

1. How to Grow Peaches

1. Land preparation and fertilizing

Peach trees have extremely strong adaptability to the environment, so they can be planted in most areas of our country. However, when planted in different regions, the quality of the peaches they produce will also differ to some extent. After all, our country has four distinct seasons and varying soil conditions, but as long as the planting method is correct, high yields can be achieved anywhere. In fact, when planting peach trees, you can skip land preparation and simply dig holes to plant them directly. However, for high yields, we can use machinery to plow the land, then dig the holes, and finally spread an appropriate amount of farmyard manure and organic compost into the holes as base fertilizer.

2. Planting at the right time

Although peach trees have strong adaptability, in order to improve their survival rate, it is best to choose late February to late March in spring each year, or late August to mid-September in autumn. The survival rate when planting during these two periods can reach over 95%, which can reduce many unnecessary losses. In addition, peach trees planted during these periods will also grow faster, thus promoting their growth cycle.

3. Planting methods

There are three common methods for planting peach trees. The first is the most traditional seed sowing, but this method grows too slowly and has too long a growth cycle, so it has now largely been phased out. The second is transplanting, which requires purchasing a large number of peach tree seedlings, making the cost relatively high, and transplanting causes great damage to the roots of peach trees, resulting in a very high mortality rate. The third is grafting, which is also the most popular planting method now. It not only has low cost but also a high survival rate and fast growth, so economic benefits are seen quickly. Of course, the planting method still depends on personal habits. If the grafting technique is not up to standard, the losses can also be severe.

4. Scientific management

Peach trees differ somewhat from some other fruit trees in terms of fertilizer and water. They have relatively high demand for nitrogen fertilizer, potassium fertilizer and phosphorus fertilizer, especially nitrogen fertilizer. Therefore, during their growth process, we should reasonably apply nitrogen fertilizer, potassium fertilizer and some other trace fertilizers to peach trees according to their growth condition. Basically, water and fertilizer are combined five to six times a year. The most important stage for weeding is the seedling stage, and weeding must be carried out at least five times a year. For mature fruit trees, three weedings a year are generally enough. There is also shaping and pruning as well as flower and fruit thinning, which are no different from growing other fruit trees, so I will not go into detail here. Finally, a relatively important point is cold and frost protection. Peach trees are still rather afraid of freezing, so in winter we need to give them warmth protection, such as wrapping them with a layer of straw or plastic film.

5. Pest and disease control

Peach trees have strong resistance. The most common problems are gummosis, anthracnose and fruit-boring worms. Gummosis has an enormous impact on the growth years and yield of fruit trees and is a very serious disease. We can brush on Kuifuling plus an appropriate amount of organic silicon once or twice, and during orchard cleaning each year, spray Kuifuling comprehensively. Anthracnose can be controlled with Bordeaux mixture. As for fruit-boring worms, it is best to use black light traps to lure and kill them. If the pest damage is severe, an appropriate amount of trichlorfon can be used for control.