How should peach trees be managed to achieve high yield and high quality?
As one of the most common fruits, peaches now come in more and more varieties, but there is a fairly common problem at present. Peaches are grown for the market, so the earlier a variety ripens, the greater its advantage in capturing the market, but the fruit grown this way is not ideal. So how can high yield and high quality be achieved?
1. Flower bud treatment
The flower bud stage is the season when peach trees need the most nutrients. Generally, a peach tree will have densely packed flower buds, and our first step should begin with treating the flower buds. The benefit of doing this is to allow more high-quality branches and flower buds to grow. The main approach is to remove the weaker flower buds so that nutrients can be supplied in a concentrated way, and this should stop before the flowering period begins. To ensure a sufficient base for later selection, there is no need to deliberately remove many flower buds at the earlier stage; you can continue observing.
2. Flower treatment
After flowering, a second round of treatment is needed. At this time, the flowers are all in a stage of competing with each other for nutrients. Although some weaker flowers cannot compete with the high-quality flowers, they still consume a lot of nutrients. To ensure the fruit-setting rate of these flowers, a batch must be specifically removed. At this time, more can be kept on strong branches, while fewer should be kept on thin branches. If the flowers are all growing well, you can consider keeping them all.
3. Young fruit treatment
After the fruit sets, this is the final round of treatment. Many growers often overlook this point, but in fact this is the most important time. At this stage, a peach tree mostly cannot ensure that all the fruits will mature, so fruits will drop one after another during this period. If growers want a high yield of high-quality fruit, then it is best to promptly clear away some unnecessary fruits. Diseased and pest-damaged fruits, and small, densely clustered fruits, are basically the priority targets for removal. This is equivalent to concentrating the energy of these waste fruits into the high-quality fruits, so the nutrient supply will be much more sufficient. In addition, since the remaining fruits are already relatively high quality, they will naturally be larger in size and higher in quality.
4. Branch treatment
In fact, clearing branches is also a very important part. The nutrients required by one excess branch are far more than those needed by an ordinary fruit, so these branches are also targets for removal. The first type of branch to remove is broken and diseased branches; the second type is fruitless branches; and the third type is fruit-thinning branches, that is, a branch with extremely good growth that does not bear much fruit for a long time. These all waste nutrients and must be removed. After clearing, new branches will naturally grow for you to select from.
A fruit tree's nutrients usually cannot supply enough for too many fruits to mature; it has a fruiting bottleneck. So why not remove those inferior fruits and let better fruits take their place, so as to achieve the goal of high yield? The quality of the fruit will also be much better this way.