If the peach trunk was 3/4 inch caliper or greater it might not push a bud, time will tell. When you prune an upright branch/trunk cut it on more of an angle so water doesn’t sit on it. I don’t think that mold will be a problem

I suspect it is a bit early to see any real growth activity in north Texas, my peaches on the 8b/9a line in Louisiana have just started showing activity in the last week or two.

I'm pretty sure those instructions were for <3' nursery stock with lots of visible buds. Not large retail trees with branch structure already established that only have (hopefully) epicormic buds on the trunk.

Texas Peach Handbook

first pic .. look at the grass/lawn ... it appears that it is still dormant ... as such.. the soil below it has not warmed enough to trigger spring growth ...

you have a pot on top of the soil ... pots can either be ahead or behind the ground.. based on NIGHT temps ... they can warm during a nice spring day ... but if nights are still cold.. they lose all heat .. so are delayed ... i can not tell you about night temps in T ... are they still coldish???

so dont focus on the warmth of the day.. start tracking the warmth of night.. so the pot can retain such all night.. and.. imo.. that is when the roots will start working ... and when the tree will bud out ...

that said.. yours will also have to initiate and grow the buds.. so it wouldnt surprise me.. if it takes your a few extra weeks.. once active... for it to show said buds ..

patience grasshopper ... in tree time ... it should come ... depending on the health of the potted plant otherwise ...

ken

ps: I i think i mixed my metaphor between the old kung fu show.. and the baseball movie.. lol ...

BTW ... please keep us posted all growing season.. you have peaked our interest ... i cant learn if you dont teach ..... ken

I agree with Smivies: it looks like you took the pruning instructions for a newly-planted young tree (whip) and applied it to a newly-planted mature tree instead. Where did you acquire the tree and how large was it when you purchased it?

Not anywhere near "mature" (15-20 ft.) of course but otherwise I agree that your tree may have been sent out with the idea that it was already trained and you have in effect made it start over again. With the Extension recommendation being based on the idea that peach trees should be low forking.

If it doesn't burst into growth, with replacement branches coming from around the cut at the normal time for your area then you have a problem other than it having been lopped back. Keeping in mind that bare-rooted stock has typically lost most of its feeder roots, so that top growth is less the first spring after planting than it will be in subsequent years, after the root system has been built back up (roots feed tops and vice versa).

With bare-rooting and cold storage through winter there is always the risk that a given specimen won't come through it in peak condition. Otherwise something I see happen at garden centers that offer bare-rooted stock displayed in sawdust beds is shoppers having pulled more than one out, in the process of extracting the one they want - and then leaving the remainder sitting out in the air. To become dried out and perhaps unable to grow away well later if not rescued in time by an employee.

Most trees are capable of returning even with bad things happening to them. Right now whatever growth the tree displays will be from stored energy in the roots and trunk. Which no doubt will be at a bit slower progress with parts now missing.

Shoots may come from well below the cut and the resulting leaves will attempt to produce more food energy for use on future growth and establishment.

And who knows? It may perform better than expected depending on the energy levels of the particular tree at planting time and aftercare it is given.

Personally I've never been a fan of aluminum foil around a trunk, except in cold weather to prevent rodent damage. It can hold moisture against the bark, causing problems like softening of the bark and inviting insects inside.

I don't prune bare root seedlings. What I see when I open a box of seedlings is whips which have trimmed to fit in the box. professionally pruned to fit in the box. I might cut off something within 24" above the roots, but nothing else.

Thank you everyone for all the input and ideas! When I was at the workshop, I thought the extension worker said that you can prune a tree of any size in this fashion. The tree he did demonstrate on was about the same size as mine (about seven feet tall from Home Depot), and I thought I heard him say that you could’ve pruned the tree that size in the manner I did. Maybe I just misheard. All I can do is just wait for spring to come and see what happens. Whatever may happen, this is still a great learning experience too!

Be sure to come back to this thread with an update. I did a similar thing with my apple trees although they only had about an inch or so caliper and I cut them at an angle. They did fine.

tj

Again the shared concept that is being worked from with peach trees specifically is that you supposedly always want to force low branching - to have the future main branches coming off of a short trunk. So during the demo the idea would have been that the trees used for it were too tall, that they were being corrected by being lopped back.

With apple trees there is a variety of pruning systems in use and it wouldn't necessarily be desirable in any particular instance to automatically cut the main stems of these back hard at the start.

Sorry for the late update, but here it is! I removed the foil as that was recommended by the forum users, and there were a few baby buds under it. I let three grow into main branches and trained them into an open center canopy design. The tree has many leaves now, and it appears to be very healthy. Thank you for all the input I received on this post!

Thanks for the update.

tj

awesome. Good tree.

So, container, based on this experience, what will you do next year?Just wondering ...

Omar

I will most likely prune some of the smaller twigs to create an open center, but keep the current main structure. Nothing drastic like this past spring!