I didn’t see where anyone had responded to your question. Yes, you need to thin the peaches. If you don’t, you’ll probably get a lot of undersized peaches that aren’t very sweet because the tree can’t make enough carbohydrates to nourish them all. You also risk branches breaking under the weight of the fruit.
Thin to about one peach every 6-10 inches along each branch. It’s best to do this about 40 days after full bloom, before the fruit reach marble-size. Try to remove the smaller, discolored or damaged fruits. Leave the biggest and best ones on the tree.
I’m really looking forward to having to do this job again. (My old peach tree died and I just planted a new one in January.)
I'm ruthless with tomatoes. Stems, leaves, fruit, trimmed. Leave a few to really pump up the tomatoes with sugars. And that's worked for me.
But I don't have a peach tree. So take it for what it's worth.
/johnny
To clarify, 6” is the minimum recommended spacing to get good-sized, tasty peaches. The 10” spacing is recommended if you want extra large fruits.
I have a mini peach tree. It is full of tiny peaches and everyone of the peaches have a scab on the skin. What can I do to clear this up, or what? I also have a bunch of “wild” peach sprouts coming up and plan to replant a couple in the pasture. One year there were so many peaches we were looking forward to harvesting them. Well, we had a very hard wind come through and blew every ripe peach off the tree. We scooped up what we could, gave everyone one we knew some, but a lot of the peaches on the ground was put in the dumpster, they were ruined. This time those little trees are going to be pruned along the fence and kept SHORT.
I’ve meant to thank you for your help!
There were so many babies to remove it was quite a task!
I left the peaches closest to the trunk end of the branch, and those hanging down. They have already increased in size quite a bit!
I’m sorry about your peach tree. I planted 3 15ft honey locust last fall. Two have leafed out, the 3rd appears to be dead or dying. I wish staring at it, & looking for life would accomplish something! I hate to watch plants die.
Thank you, a lot!