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["Dianne Stephany" <iluvdanc@rochester.rr.com>]

Title: My VistaPrint Electronic Business Card

 

Hi!

I just picked about 2 bushell of nice, red juicy Star Fire peaches today.  They are delicious.

 

I noted a couple of things while I was picking-- NO YELLOW JACKETS. I did not see ONE. Amazing! No holes in the peaches swarming with yellow jackets- or in any of the apples, or any other fruit for that matter. I wonder if the skunks got so hungry last year during the drought that they ate all the colonies?

 

Another thing I noted was that even with rain every day for weeks at a time I only found 3 peaches with a brown rot- probably peach leaf curl which they had before and looked like it.  I treated the tree once in the late spring with Soap Shield (a copper based fungicide) and once with Serenade (B. subtilis) both from Gardens ALive. I could only treat with serenade once due to all the rain we have been having.   I know from previous years that one spray would not stop peach leaf curl with so much rain, but my 2 peach trees look great and the fruit is not moldy.  So I think the Soap Shield worked great.  I will even follow directions this year and spray in the late fall as well.

 

Our Simka plum tree has a gazillion fruit but I am losing a lot due to mold from all the rain. I am thinking that I could try the Soap Shield on it this fall and next spring....I don't think that the Serenade would do much good this late. I think the plums have about another week to go till ripe. 

 

OH, and I need to make a correction to an earlier post I made. My neighbor had told me his ornamental plum had plum pox.  Recently plum pox has been found in 2 counties in NY and orchards have been quaranteened. Now I know that we do not have plum pox. His tree has black knot and feeds a gazzillion plum curculio beetles. The black knot has spread to my Simka. I keep cutting it out. Any thing else I can do ?

 

 

 

Thanks for any advice,

Dianne Stephany in Rochester NY, zone 5-- where we are expecting a 3 day dry spell.