My new peach has a bit of gum oozing right at the graft union as of this morning.
I can not locate any evidence of a hole or borer, but I have read that excessive rainfall/moisture can cause this - and we had 1” last week, two days after I watered the tree, (because I didn’t trust the forecast), and then we got another 4 1/2 inches of rain this last couple days. Without evidence of a borer hole and otherwise healthy growth, should I be too concerned
I would not be concerned. I was looking at one of my peaches this morning and there was several pounds of glop on the ground below it.
Scott, I do appreciate these type of responses. I think the first instinct is to panic when seeing goo or any type of issue with the tree.
This response, although not meant to be funny, surely eliminates some of the panic when you refer to pounds of goo at the base of my tree.
I am in year 5 now and I feel so much more comfortable with issues due to this forum. In most cases you just have to remember it’s a plant and most of the issues are able to be fixed.
So to you and your pounds of peach goo, cheers!
Any idea what triggered your oozing? I’m still trying to figure out why done peach trees ooze and others do not.
I always assumed it was a low-grade bacterial canker… @Drew51 mentioned it was likely some other related disease which I forget the name of right now. I was really worried about it ten years ago but the trees still alive ten years later are not the ones not oozing back then; it doesn’t seem to have mattered.
Last year I went into panic mode when I saw goo. This year after seeing a few spots on my plum trees I realized that it was here to stay. I’m reading these post and simply observing.
It is canker, just fungal, this one is most cases, not the same as bacterial canker on cherry trees (mostly, but any prunus)
Thanks for the feedback Scott. I feel much more calm now. Have you seen any trees die from canker? Anyway you could share a picture of the mass oozing you have? That would be super educational.
The peach trees I have lost are primarily from borers. I can’t think of any tree where the cankers did it in.
You are half an hour late on the picture request as I was out there earlier but now am at work. I did notice the mass of goo still there on the ground, and will hopefully get a picture this evening. I think when these trees had bad borers the infection got much worse as they were in a weakened and vulnerable state. I thought the trees were going to decline and die, but once the borers were under control they sprang back to life.
Thanks a ton for the feedback Scott. I’ve been removing the goo and checking it for sawdust. Haven’t seen any sawdust in there so I suspect its just canker. Hope you have a nice day.
If it’s not too much trouble could you post a picture of the goop on your tree? Curious what it looks like.
Oozing from a peach tree is not always a sign of canker. Most of my
trees do it after periods of heavy rain, and they don’t have any canker.
It’s a normal reaction caused by excessive rain.
Oops I forgot to take the picture. I don’t think there is much there now, as Ray mentions it mainly comes out during the rains and its been dry the last couple of days. But I’ll try (harder) to look tomorrow and take a picture. I think its probably a disease as some trees have it and some don’t.
I remembered yesterday!!! Here is a close shot of what it looks like in a dry period.
Here is a somewhat blurry shot of the full trunk
As you can see there is lots of bark damage. All of those areas are oozing during a rain, and most of it dries up and/or falls off when its dry again. This tree is still putting on healthy growth; you can tell how healthy a peach is by how long the shoots are on the top of the tree. If they are 6" or less around now its not healthy at all.
