Early this season when I was up in the orchard just observing my trees (I like to do that), I noticed something
a little weird.
I have this little Peach tree that has two main trunks. One side is producing leaves and very few flowers and the other side is producing loads of flowers and very few leaves. Both branches, or trunks, are above the graft so there isn’t any chance of it acting like two different trees.
Did I Make My Peach Tree Produce More Fruit by Accident?
For those of you who don’t know, many fruit trees are grafted which means that part of a desirable tree is attached to the root stock of a tree that is known to be more hardy. In other words the roots of the resulting tree are not the same variety that is seen, cultivated and harvested. This can have unintended results for the Orchardist. If the tree starts a growth below the graft it will have the characteristics of the root stock tree and not the fruit variety that is intended…
Be careful. This technique can kill your tree in the long turn because you put a lot of stress in it doing girdling. Personally I don’t like to stress a tree to force it to produce more (girdling, water stress etc). Just be patient 🙂
Thank you for the warning. This was done completely unintentional. I don’t think I would attempt this on purpose 🙂