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charina_gw

Seeking Advice on Training Peaches To Fit a Narrow Space

charina
10 years ago

I'm interested in other's opinions how they would approach training/shaping of peaches and nectarines in a five foot wide space between a sidewalk and the street.

To date, I have only pruned peach trees to a traditional open center with 3 or 4 scaffolds. This year, I will be planting peach and nectarine trees in a five foot wide strip between the sidewalk and the street, and am still undecided exactly how I will control their width so there is limited overhang and no eye-poking sticks for neighbors to 'find' as they walk by. I have about 120 ft of street side parking strip 5 ft wide that is going to waste as grass that has to be mowed.
Initially I thought I was going to try a quad v shape to maximize the scaffold footage and production. I don't mind the height and the ladder work necessary. And it would keep much of the productive parts of the tree out of reach of the deer that roam through this residential neighborhood. (although the deer avoidance is not a necessity - the dog [who loves to chase deer off the property] will be spending every night outdoors once it warms up.) I think I'm balking a little bit as I'm concerned that the trees are going to look gangly and unattractive with four tall straight near-vertical scaffolds. Esp in the winter. I'm not trying to impress the neighbors (although the wife is a little concerned about not offending them) - I just don't want something unattractive to myself as I drive up to the house.

I've read what I can find on here, particularly Fruitnut's and Scott's posts about pruning to control size. DW's BYOC has been a little bit of help, but not enough. I'm still having a hard time visualizing how to go about this in the space I want to fit these trees into. Go tall with quad v? Go narrow with a parallel v? Use something like a Spanish bush technique as a hybrid between open center and hex v, but still keeping the tree small? Just go open center and prune aggressively?

How would you go about effectively utilizing such a space for stone fruit production?

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