North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>]

I planted some peach trees last year and didn't pay enough attention to 
them over the summer. In the fall, I realized that something had been 
killing the growing tips of all the branches. This caused them to get 
very bushy, sprouting more and more shoots that also died at the ends. 
The trees looked fine at a distance, but the problem was obvious when I 
looked closer.

After looking around on the Internet, I figured it might be peach twig 
borers (though I could never see any worms or insects in the ends). I 
used dormant spray last winter, and tried Bt in the spring, but I've 
still got the problem. It's also started to show up on a couple of 
pluots I planted this spring, and a little bit on my sour cherry.

Since I'm in Nebraska, I called the Backyard Farmer public TV program, 
but the person answering phones told me to just take a sample of the 
problem to a local nursery. So I did that, and they told me it wasn't an 
insect, but some kind of disease. They didn't know what kind of disease, 
but suggested maybe peach leaf curl (peach trees aren't very common 
here, to say nothing of pluots!).

Well, it doesn't look like any pictures of peach leaf curl I can find on 
the Internet. Almost all of the leaves on my peach trees look just fine 
(the pluots have some wildly-contorted leaves, though). There's no sign 
of any problem on the peach trees except for the very tips of the 
growing branches. The extreme tip - right at the very end - dies, and 
there are a couple of small, brown leaves withered up there, but 
everything else looks great. The branch then sprouts out all sorts of 
places, often within an inch of where the end died. I've tried to 
dissect the dead ends, and the pith is brown and sort of gummy and 
grainy, but I can't see anything that looks alive. And it doesn't extend 
down the branch. The dead part is only an inch long (though the outer 
stem, which stays green, is somewhat swollen).

Does this sound familiar to anyone? I've been cutting off the dead ends 
and tossing them in the garbage, but I keep getting more. With no real 
idea of the problem, I've started spraying with Bonide Fruit Tree Spray 
(Captan, Malathion, and Carbaryl). My local nursery told me that it 
would be fine for all my fruit trees, not just the species listed on the 
label. But I would much rather target the specific problem, if I could 
figure out what it is.

Thanks much,

Bill
Lincoln, NE (zone 5)


--
Not only is life a bitch, it has puppies. - Adrienne E. Gusoff