Thinning peaches on your tree is an important part of managing your peach tree well. This article and video will teach you how to thin peaches.
Why Should you Thin your Peaches?
There are two main reasons why you should thin your peaches every year.
Weight Load
The first to thin a peach tree is to reduce the weight load on your tree. Too many peaches can be really bad for a peach tree. At maturity, peaches can weigh a lot and with too many peaches on the tree, the weight load can cause a lot of damage. Thinning the tree will help you keep your tree healthy and will prevent broken branches.
Bigger and sweeter fruit
The second reason to thin peaches is to get bigger sweeter fruit. A peach tree can only sweeten and ripen so much fruit. If you have too many peaches on a tree then the energy and sugars in the tree will have to be spread too thin. This will produce smaller, inferior-tasting fruit. By thinning your peaches you will get larger fruit that will also be sweeter. You will be really happy you thinned when it comes time to harvest your peaches.
Learn how to thin your peaches by watching my YouTube Video:
How to Thin Peaches
When to Thin Peaches
You should thin your peaches when the fruits on the tree are between the size of a dime and a quarter. Thinning at this time gives the tree just enough time to start “favoring” fruit. You will notice on each branch that there are some fruits that are getting larger quicker than others. These are the fruits the tree is favoring and should be left on the tree while smaller fruit should be removed. For most of North America, early June is the time to thin your peach tree (May if you live in the South).
What to Thin First
Before you get really serious about thinning the first thing you should do on each branch is remove any double fruits. Sometimes two blossoms that are really close together will both set fruit and these will “grow together” into one double fruit. Get rid of all of these first as they will never grow into good peaches.
Next look for any peaches that when mature will rub together or touch (even if they are on different branches). Remove one of these two peaches as well. Fruit that touches or rubs on another fruit will ripen unevenly and the rubbing can damage the fruit giving room for pests to enter.
Next look for weak, small, or withered fruits. Mother nature may take care of these herself (sometimes call “June Drop”) but since you know they won’t be good peaches just get rid of them now.
Spacing of Peaches When Thinning
Your peaches should be spaced roughly 6 to 8 inches apart. A simple guide to help you is if you extend your thumb and pinky finger on your hand (see the photo below). For most of us, this is about 6 inches. Use this as a guide and thin to roughly this far apart.
Tips for removing the peaches
Peaches come off with a slight twisting motion. Also be sure when you are removing fruit that you pull up the branch towards the tip, instead of down the branch towards the trunk. Pulling down towards the trunk risks striping part of the bark of the branch away from the tree. This will allow pests to more easily enter the tree and cause damage.
The Worst Job in Gardening
Thinning a peach tree is the worst job to do in gardening. Not that it is all that difficult, but instead because it just feels so painful to remove all that potential fruit! But learning how to thin peaches is important. You really HAVE TO do it! If you leave too many fruits on the tree it can damage the tree and will leave you will bland tasting fruit. So get out there now and thin your peaches. It’s never too late to thin, even if you miss the “quarter-size” stage that we talked about before you should still thin. Your tree will thank you!!
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This was very helpful. I’m growing peach trees for the first time here in SC, planted 4 new trees (4-5 feet tall) the first week of January. My Elberta trees are loaded with little quarter sized peaches, the Red Haven look like they will not bear this year. I’ll be thinning them this weekend. Appreciate your expert advice
You’re very welcome! If this is the first year for those trees I would take all the fruit off so they can focus on tree growth.
OK. Good tip. It’s so hard to throw away the little fruit, but I get the long run payoff
anything to be done with the peaches that you remove during thinning?
No not really. You could put them in your compost, but they would take a long time to breakdown, other than that no uses that I can think of.
Should I cut off the part of the branch that goes way past the fruit I’m keeping?
No absolutely not! You are only removing the fruit, andy pruning should have been done while the tree was dormant.
Hi there. First time peach tree owner and my tree has TONS of fruit. I didn’t know to thin so they are about an inch to an inch and a half i. Diameter now and started to turn orange. Is it too late to thin them? I would hate to hurt my beautiful tree as well as get rubbish fruit! Thanks in advance.
I meant to add that my newly planted tree is about 8 years old from a nursery. I am in Texas so flowers showed up mid march this year. Thanks again!
I’m very new at Peach Trees. I rescued a few small plants from the woods out back in my property (my grandma had planted originally 60 yrs ago)No one really knew what all was back there, just “she planted some stuff ” They grew up fast as rockets and the second year i had “heirloom white peaches ” the size of softballs. We ate breakfast off the tree that year! I’ve had personal health problems and I have not been outside in a long while.Now my behemoth is overflowing with fruit and about 25ft tall. She’s broken a major branch! It’ about a week or two before ripened fruit and I am worried about what I have to do. If I trim the branches, do I paint the nub? Do I need to “bandage” it or something (obviously any wrapping would cause disease,rot, pests. But it’s a precious treat and tree to me and I can’t just not do something.
You could have an arborist look at it. But normally it isn’t recommended to paint or wrap a wound like that. Just let the tree take care of it itself. It knows what to do and will heal over the wound.
Thinning with still help. Not as much as if you had done it earlier, but it will still reduce the load on the tree and help the remaining fruit be sweeter and bigger.
Thank you! Should I thin out the bigger ines and so giving the smaller, less ripe ones time to mature and grow bigger?you post is so helpful. Thank you so much!
Thank you SO much for the tips on how & when to thin peach trees…along with when to harvest the peaches, too. A little guidance from your clear explanations have been very helpful.
I don’t know what variety the peach tree is because I bought it after season about 4 years ago for $5. I planted it in a pot that has now split, but I think the roots have gone into the ground. The tree is about 6 ft in height and leaning. Should I try to repot it? or leave it alone?
I would need to see a photo to see what it was looking like.
I’ve got a 5 year old peach tree and it’s made dime to quarter size peaches and stopped growing each year for 3 years straight now. This year same thing. Noticed it stopped growing after it got to quarter size. After about 3-4 weeks of not growing again researched and found thinning to 6 inches suggested which I did, but peaches never grew in size after that. Now I noticed {in august) they are getting soft so tried and to my amazement some were actually sweet but miniture in size. So next year will thin when dime size and still growing. Perplexed as to why peaches never started growing again after thinning this year. Any answers?
It could be a lack of nutrients. Try a generic fertilizer specific for fruit trees and I bet it will they’ll increase in size. Thinning earlier would help as well. What climate are you in? What’s your watering schedule like?
Male sure to water regularly in the early morning and not to overwater. Do you know what variety of peach it is?
Does this process apply to all stone fruits? Asking in particular about plums.
Yes you do need to thin plumbs as well to a similar distance appart.
Is it all right, and is it good, to leave thinned peaches at the base of the tree? My thinking is that if no one were around, the peaches that thinned themselves would lie there and decompose, fertilizing the tree. So hard to just throw them in the trash!
Should be okay, they will take a while to break down.
HELP! Every year my peach tree is loaded with peaches. They look like bunches of grapes. They are about walnut sized and the branches are touching the ground. Can I still thin? We lost 3 branches last year because if the weight load. Also, what is the very best way, at this point, to make sure the bugs stay out if the peaches? I’ve been spraying weekly with orchard spray, but still see some peaches with the clear gummy spots. Makes me sad to get beautiful peaches with a worm living inside. :/
My plumb tree is in the same situation!
I know nothing about fruit trees.
It’s never too late to thin. Get some of that weight load off those branches so you don’t loose any more.
We bag our fruit so I don’t know much about spraying. You should contact your local extension agency and see if they have a spraying schedule.
I don’t know anything about bagging fruit on the tree. Do you have a prior post on that? I’m in western SC and have already thinned my Elberta and Red Haven trees (2 of each) and they look really good so far.
I do not have a post on it, but I did a video a few years ago. It is focused on apples but the same method will work for peaches:
https://youtu.be/FK365Dsfo5c
Great video thank you.