Hi Kara135 - I am not sure about your specific case, but of my peach trees 2 of them were really slow to come out of dormancy but they eventually did. The others were on schedule. So generally, I would be surprised if a pruning, even a harsh pruning, would inhibit your tree from growing. I would recommend giving it a bit more time and hopefully the warmth plus the rain will get it going. Good luck!

Kara,

When you said your peach "is only sprouting from the bottom". Can you tell if it's sprouted from below a graft union?

If so, your peach scion (the variety you want above the graft union) may not have made it and you are left with the growth from a rootstock.

Or maybe, you peach is slow to break dormancy. I don't know what kind of peach you are growing, where you are located. Was this peach showed growth this time last year?

Like Conway said, even if you pruned it hard last year, generally it will grow back under a normal growing condition.

Last year it had several branches, mostly on the top half of the tree, but they looked very weak and flimsy, so I cut them back. Today it looks like a stick. All trunk. The current growth I had came from the bottom of the trunk and was growing straight up, so I cut it off. I thought they were suckers. It also seemed to have gained vertical height. I will look to see if I can find the "graft union". We live in N. California and my fathers tree would always have summer fruit.

What variety is your peach? How deep did you plant your tree? (just curious if you buried the graft union). I planted mine with graft unions a few inches above the soil. Most of time for a new tree, it's quite easy to identify where a graft union is.

You pruned your peach quite harshly, the tree may need more time to recover.

If you want to find out, you can scratch the trunk to see if the cambium is still green. If it is, your tree is still alive.

It's still not evident where is graft is. We planted the tree a year ago. I did the scrape test and the bottom does show some green. A few inches above that, when I scraped the bark, it looked orangish and then tan.

Tan is usually dead wood. I'd say wait for a few more weeks to see if there is any growth.

When I first started growing fruit trees, I bought a "Red Haven" peach tree from a not reputable vendor. After the first winter, it's dead. Obviously, it's not the real Red Haven and could not handle New England winter.

There are many reasons why trees are dead (I am not saying that yours is yet). One reason is planting a tree in a wrong zone.