If there was some way to make peach trees not get disease and live forever I think the people who make their money growing peaches would probably be on to it. There’s probably a reason non-organic peach growing is way more popular commercially than organic-only disease controls.
2 Likes
Unfortunately true. I use copper which is organic but so many say too much will hurt your orchard. Looking into ways to remove copper. I see grapes and blackberries absorb quite a bit. Seems like the best way to control copper in the soil is by growing fruit there. Put some apricots around your copper sprayed peaches to take it out of the soil.
1 Like
The issue with copper based fungicides is that the concentrations are incredibly high for the sake of convenience. i.e. a brute force approach of throwing as much copper as possible so that it sticks around providing residual safety. That way the grower doesn’t have to be in the field spraying 2% copper 10 times in the season.
Again, customers are used to $2/lb peach or less. There is no incentive for growers or companies to invest and resources to find effective formulas that doesn’t contain 30% MCE.
2 Likes
If and only if one can find a market where $5-10/lb peach is acceptable and the grower is sufficiently capitalized to absorb costs for half a decade. However, for home growers our fruits are already the most expensive, with some additional time and investment one can grow without using various toxins.
3 Likes
Personally, if I lived farther away from a salmon spawning creek, I would have no problem doing a copper douse once a year. But I’ve seen with my own eyes when I studied as an undergrad, helping graduates do fieldwork, of the first hand death dealt by copper. Just a little copper kills all the salmonidae eggs. Not one and 10, but all of them like a nuclear bomb. Also, if copper is dosed in an aquarium, inverebrates like snails and shrimp die in hours of being added to the tank. Even years later unless the substrate is swapped out.
But my northmost trees are like 4 feet from the creek bank. I could not live with myself if I oversprayed or thought about rain drip. There are pinks down creek every year, and the coho salmon my elementary school release every year are released into the same creek.
More a location problem than a problem with copper overall.
4 Likes
Thanks for posting that vid Drew. I almost always enjoy watching videos about growing peaches.
But… I don’t buy that that peach tree is 20 years old (at about 11:20 min in the vid). That bark on the trunk (and scaffolds) is way too smooth for a 20 year old tree. I’d estimate the tree at about 6 or 7 years old. Maybe the owner was confused, or maybe the youtube influencer was confused, but I don’t believe that tree is 20 years old.
Compare the bark on that tree to your 10 year old tree you posted.
That said, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Your trees are doing well under your care. And the important thing is you are getting good fruit!
2 Likes
I guess sometimes I forget about the bottom line. I am happy with the product. Reminds me when I pass out Arctic Glo nectarines people often think it’s a plum. One person said to me “what is a nectarine?” This was a 50 year old man not some young kid. It reminds me how far we try to remove ourselves from nature. He would not take one. He didn’t have a clue to what it was.
I also noticed in that video the staking of the trees. I never let mine bear enough to need to do that. Another example of pushing quantity over quality. Interesting what trees he liked though. I’m going to look into some of those.
1 Like
Ziram also worked great for me
@Olpea That supposedly 20 yr old peach tree in MI didn’t impress me. The center was completely devoid of growth. And it needed supports under the limbs to keep them off the ground. Won’t it be better to have induced regrowth in the center and stiffer scaffolds? Keep it stiff enough to support the crop load. Is this how your old trees look or do yours still have growth and fruit in the center of the tree?
Around here and I suspect in KS, that open center and bare trunk would result in sunburn.
And yes it didn’t look 20 yrs old.
I have always kept my center open. I thought you were supposed to? A peach trees in my experience don’t have much growth on lower parts of old branches. I have seen unpruned trees with only new growth at the end of branches. You need to prune to stimulate old branches to keep growing. I find peach trees the hardest to prune correctly. Not any forgiveness for mistakes. On my trees almost all lower limbs on scaffolds died back if they stop growing. Only pruning kept them growing although sometimes that doesn’t even help. Other branches can grow nine feet in a season so it’s not really a lack of vigor.
The tree needs support because the branches are too horizontal probably bent like that from not thinning enough. Being greedy and trying for more peaches than fewer ones which would have more sugar. I have some very horizontal branches but I never let fruit load get heavy. After a few years they thicken up nicely.
There’s open and then there’s bare of all new growth. Bare isn’t good. That’s wasted space and sunburn in hot climates. In CA the peaches and other stone fruits aren’t bare in the center.
Right, that’s what the center needed years ago. You can’t just keep pushing all new growth out. Some needs to go up in the center in order to keep that area productive and protected. That would be my approach. But then Michigan is a different ballgame.
1 Like
You know my ten year old tree actually looks a lot like that tree except the branches do not need support.
Off the subject
It had canker too, but five years of hitting it with copper the area completely disappeared looks like it was never there. I also sprayed the brown rot fungicides there to. It couldn’t hurt.
Totally agree with you and with Drew, who I think is saying the same thing in a different way.
It seems somewhat clear to me the farmer in the vid doesn’t prune back horizontal branches or shoots. Pruning peach trees not only entails pruning vertical growth, but also pruning horizontal growth to stiffen branches and scaffolds.
I know some growers put braces under branches, but from my experience that results either from not pruning back horizontal growth to a reasonable structural frame, or allowing too many fruit to develop on the scaffolds for optimum size and flavor, as Drew alluded to.
Again totally agree the center was cut out too much. Too devoid of growth for my area. It’s easy to do sometimes when there are hundreds of trees to prune. But yes, it can (and has in my orchard) result in sunburn.
Seems like so many aspects are sort of a sweet spot. Easy to overdo. Like Icarus, it’s easy to fly too close to the Sun.
3 Likes
Luckily sun damage is rare here I have seen it after a heavy prune. The trees recover fairly well. Fungal issues is a concern here so I do like to keep trees open. Brown rot seems to occur in the most shaded areas first. You want to thin well too. Touching fruit is never good.
Here comes the PLC… most of the Oregon Curlfree still shows no symptoms, but a few leaves look like these:
Yup it’s PLC. I am not seeing any on my trees that were part of my experiment. I think it would be good to get percentage of leaves that showed PLC, and how fast they get dropped by the tree.
1 Like
Was your PLC experiment with colloidal silver?
repeated sprays of H2O2 and biological fungicide montery garden friendly. I posted it here few months ago. I will try to dig that thread.
1 Like
Few pics of the trees that got sprays through the winter. From December to end of February they were sprayed total of 6 times with H202 and 7 times with Monterey bio fungicide. The Kreibich nectarine tree broke when an excavator knocked the pot over, and Spice Zee nectaplum died during the cold snap.
I also want to add I don’t see any curl yet on Salish summer, Frost, and Oregon Curl free either. These three trees were not sprayed with H202 or Monterey Bio fungicide during the dormant season. Their last bio fungicide spray was previous summer.
Morton Nectarine
Landt Peach
Nanimo Peach
Pacific Pride Nectarine
1 Like
Ok I now get the complete protocol that I need to start after dormancy this winter
Thanks
Dennis