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  • From: Don Yellman <dyellman@earthlink.net>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Peach Drop
  • Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 11:40:49 -0400

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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