Hi Sunset, I'm still pretty new to fruit trees so I'll just make suggestions. But I'm sure somebody much smarter will come along to answer your question soon.
I planted a dozen fruit trees 2 years ago and I've added several more since then. I think your supposed to prune your trees at the very end of winter just before bud break in the spring, not now. And I highly recommend that you watch a bunch of youtube videos first. For every tree I was pruning I watched the videos about how that apple or peach or plum tree was supposed to be pruned. They'll all similar but some give you more info than others and it helps to understand the process well before you attempt it. I learned a lot. I did the scaffold on most of them but left a few with the main leader.
However....All the videos stressed pruning out dead stuff and to allow more air and light into the center and to stop branches from rubbing. Except for the apple videos. Lots of them stressed that sun had to shine directly on the apple for it to ripen. So I followed their instructions... and all the apples on 3 sides of my Fuji got badly sunburned! I live in super hot Arizona and I guess they weren't talking to me. I will let more branches grow out from now on.
Your peach tree is adorable but you probably should stake it because the trunk is very skinny. Wind can snap it in two pretty quickly. I staked many of my trees until the trunks got thicker.
I live in screaming hot Arizona where it is over 100* most of the summer. So I did paint the trunks a year ago in the spring with interior latex paint mixed with water. I usually have a problem with ants bringing aphids to some of my plants so I planted tansy around all of them. It is supposed to repel ants. It didn't grow very big though. None of the trees got sun scald last year. This spring the tansy grew to be 3-4' tall and totally shielded the trunks from the sun. Looked much better then white paint. So I didn't paint them again. But... 2 months ago I realized that most of the tansy plants had flopped over and exposed the tree trunks. But still, none of them got sun scald this year either. Go figure. But it didn't hurt anything to paint them. If I do it again I will probably use prettier pastel colors! And all those branches that you said were previously cut off have already scabbed over well so you can paint right over them if you want to. They're not fresh cuts.
So far, my peach trees are doing well. And this spring I planted Mexican sunflowers around one of my peach trees and they didn't flop over. They were much prettier. And the peaches were terrific this year, fresh, frozen and dehydrated. Hope this helps. Happy gardening.
Debbie
