Fruit Cocktail Tree (Peaches, Plums, Nectarines) Leaf Spot

I have a fruit cocktail tree, planted 2 years ago and bought from a local nursery. Produced maybe 10 fruits its first year and then suffered from what I believe to be leaf spot and lost almost all of its leaves. I treated with Bonide Fruit Tree Spray (the hose attachment version) and it recovered before the end of the season but didn’t produce any more fruit. This year, the tree has been doing very well and is producing probably 30 or 40 fruits. I have noticed that the same problem as last year (potential leaf spot) is happening again. I treated it at the first sign of black spots on some of the leaves. That was a few weeks ago and the issue has progressed significantly and it has been losing more and more leaves every day. The fruit is still growing but I’m trying to get ahead of this problem. Any suggestions? Should I continue to treat with the fruit tree spray and just be patient?

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Bacterial Leaf Spot is a hard disease to deal with. There is no treatment once infection occurs, but there are two protecting agents that can be sprayed when whether conditions are expected to be favorable for the disease:

1-Copper; but it is phytotoxic and you should use low doses to avoid poisoning the leaves too much.
2-Oxytetracycline; safe, but has short residual (~2 days)

I have used copper octanoate (the mildest form of copper) the past few years, but I always saw some injury to the foliage. This year I purchased Oxytetracycline and will have first hand experience with it.

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One of the things you could also do is to practice orchard sanitation. Clean up all diseased leaves under your tree and put them out with trash, not in your compost pile. This practice applies to other fruit tree diease such as brown rot (pick up all diseased fruit and affected leaves).

Here’s the info on bacterial leave spot from Pen. State.
Stone Fruit Disease - Bacterial Spot.

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