My four peach trees came with the house, so I didn't have to worry about waiting for them to mature before fruiting. Only one or two of the trees puts out much fruit; the other two are small and straggly and don't produce much. The tree closest to the house produces a bumper crop to make up for the others, though.
After having lived here for about five years, my peach trees got damaged in a hail storm and did not produce any fruit the following two or three years as the bark healed. The few peaches that did grow tasted sour and sappy; the only one that grew full and plump fell off the tree, and my dad ran over it with the lawn mower. So, if there's hail coming, throw a tarp or something over the trees.
Bugs and birds love fresh peaches, of course. I've never used pesticides, and those fake rubber owls that gardening centers supply get ignored by real birds, so I don't bother with those either. This means a lot of my peaches wind up pecked and on the ground. I can't say I mind all that much since there's no way I could possibly eat all the peaches myself anyway. Every summer, I wind up baking peach pies and cobblers and taking them to work, plus I fill several plastic containers with sliced peaches and sugar water to store in the freezer.
