USA Tree, fruit trees and edible gardens
Peach

Quick care

Peach

Florida peaches are a real thing and they are early: ripe in April and May, long before anywhere further north. The variety has to be a low-chill one.

Free peach reminders, four times a year

Leave your email and at the start of each season, spring, summer, fall and winter, we will send you one short note about this plant: what it is about to do, and what it needs from you. Written for Central Florida, by the people who grew it.

We will never spam you and we will never sell or share your address with anyone. Four emails a year about your plants, nothing else, and one click stops them for good. We do not pass your details to any other company, ever.

Right now: Fall

Leaves drop and the tree goes quiet. Nothing is happening above ground and that is as it should be.

What to do

  • Do not feed.
  • Rake up and remove fallen leaves and fruit. Both carry disease through to spring.
  • Keep mulch and weeds pulled back from the trunk.
  • Water during a long dry spell; a dormant tree still has roots.

The quick care card

The same three columns as the sign on your plant.

Planting and the first 30 days

Sun
Full sun, 6+ hours daily.
Soil
Well-drained soil is best.
Planting
Plant at the same depth as the pot.
Mulch
Add 2 to 3 inches of mulch, but keep it away from the trunk.
Water
Daily for the first week, then 2 to 3 times weekly for the rest of the first month. Water deeply.
Feed
Use a light fertiliser after new growth starts.

Ongoing care

Water
Water during dry spells.
Feed
Feed in spring and early summer.
Prune
Prune in winter to shape an open center.
Thin fruit
Thin heavy fruit set for better size.

What to expect

Growth after 1 year
Often 3 to 5+ feet of new growth.
Fruiting
Often in 2 to 3 years.
Pollination
Many are self-pollinating; ask if yours needs a pollinator.
Key tip
Choose a low-chill variety for Florida.

Full care

Prunus persica

Chill hours decide everything

A peach needs a certain number of hours below about 45 degrees in winter before it will break bud properly and flower. Lake County delivers somewhere around 300 to 450 hours in a normal winter and considerably fewer in a warm one. A Georgia or Carolina peach wanting 800 hours will sit there each spring, leaf out raggedly, flower thinly and never give you a crop.

The Florida varieties are bred for exactly this. Florida Prince wants about 150 hours, UFBest around 250, Tropic Beauty about 150. Those numbers are the reason they work here, and they are the first question to ask about any peach anybody offers you.

The other side of low chill is early everything. A Florida peach flowers in January or February and ripens in April or May. That is wonderful, because you are eating peaches before the rest of the country has started, and it does mean a February frost can catch the open flowers.

Thin the fruit, which nobody wants to do

This is the highest-value job on the whole list and almost everybody skips it. A peach sets far more fruit than it can ripen properly. Left alone you get eighty small, dull, stony peaches; thinned to one fruit every six inches along the branch you get thirty large sweet ones off the same tree, the branches do not break, and the tree is in better shape next year.

Do it when the fruitlets are the size of a thumbnail, after the tree's own natural drop has finished. It feels like vandalism. Do it anyway.

Open centre, and brown rot

Prune to a vase shape with an open middle and keep it there. The reason is brown rot: a fungus that turns ripening peaches into grey fuzzy mummies within days in Florida humidity, and the single best defence is sun and air moving through the canopy.

The other half is housekeeping. Every mummified fruit left on the tree or on the ground is next year's infection, so pick them all off and remove them. Peach tree borer is worth a look too: sawdust-like frass and gum low on the trunk is the sign, and keeping mulch and weeds back off the trunk makes the tree much less attractive to it.

Through the year

The four notes we email, all in one place.

Spring

Fruit filling fast after a January or February bloom, and harvest beginning. Florida peaches are a spring fruit, not a summer one.

  • Thin the fruit to roughly one every six inches as soon as the natural drop is over. This is the most important job of the peach year.
  • Feed once as growth starts and once more after thinning.
  • Water steadily while the fruit sizes; a dry spell now means small peaches.
  • Watch for brown rot as the fruit colours and remove any affected peach the day you see it.

Summer

Harvest finishes, usually by June, and the tree spends the rest of the summer growing the wood that will fruit next year.

  • Prune straight after harvest. Taking a third off now keeps the tree open and short without costing next year's crop.
  • Remove every mummified fruit from the tree and the ground.
  • Check the trunk base for gum and sawdust, which means borer.
  • Stop feeding by midsummer so growth hardens.

Fall

Leaves drop and the tree goes quiet. Nothing is happening above ground and that is as it should be.

  • Do not feed.
  • Rake up and remove fallen leaves and fruit. Both carry disease through to spring.
  • Keep mulch and weeds pulled back from the trunk.
  • Water during a long dry spell; a dormant tree still has roots.

Winter

Chill accumulating, then flowering, often in January. The pruning window is narrow and it is now.

  • Prune in December or early January to an open vase: take out the centre, head back the leaders, remove anything growing inwards.
  • Finish before the buds swell.
  • Do not feed.
  • If a hard frost is forecast while it is in flower, accept that you may lose some bloom. A peach usually sets enough from what is left, and covering a flowering tree is rarely practical.

Peach varieties we grow

Grown here in Eustis or bought in from Florida nurseries in our network.

The full growing guide Shop peach All care guides

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