[NAFEX] Peach Drop
Don Yellman
dyellman at earthlink.net
Sun Jun 8 11:40:49 EDT 2003
Dylan Ford wrote:
> Dear All,
> The blossoms on my peach trees (which survived a freak late
> snowstorm) developed into a bumper crop of fruit. I was waiting until after
> fruit drop to thin them, but last week all of the peaches got squishy and
> fell off the tree. Is it possible that two months of unrelenting rain and
> damp (I am thinking of building an ark) could have rotted them off, absent
> any obvious additional disease symptoms? Thanks.
> dylan
>
>
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Dylan:
This is the kind of advice that always seems to come after the fact, but
here is what I did to the peach trees this spring: I began by
aggressively thinning the branches (I did not dormant prune), heading
back by 1/3 to 1/2, and removing nearly all of the vertical growth above
the fruiting branches. The objective was to get as much light and air
circulation to the peaches as possible. Then I thinned off 90% or more
of the little peaches, which still left a heavy fruit set. I did this
in week 2 of May, during a brief dry period. I have been doing the
second thinning during the past week, removing still crowded fruits, and
those showing mildew or insect damage. I will have to do one or two
more thinnings, since there are still too many healthy peaches up there.
I credit this early intervention for the beautiful set of large,
fast-growing peaches, perhaps the best I have had at this stage, in
spite of the nearly continuous cloudy, rainy, and cool weather. I have
only been able to spray twice due to the rains and wind, once with
Imidan mixed with a little lime/sulfur, targeted at plum curculio and
mildews, and again with Malathion to try to keep the oriental fruit moth
at bay. I don't know that the sprays have been a critical factor at
all; insect problems seem to have taken a back seat to fungal and rot
issues this year. I am a little surprised that I haven't seen peach
leaf curl even though it is normally rare here. The climate has been
much more like the coastal Pacific Northwest than Northern Virginia so
far this spring.
I get two types of mildew on young peaches; one shows small rust colored
patches, the other small white patches. I am just guessing they are
different mildew strains, but either one is the end of a young,
developing peach. Perhaps that is what caused your peaches to fall off,
if your trees are mature and have set and retained fruit before. I
don't recall exactly where you are located (somwhere in the Carolinas?),
but it sounds as if you have had almost exactly the same weather
conditions I have faced.
Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA
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