I’m hoping that someone can diagnose what is going on with this reliance peach( Z 7A ). If flowered strongly, put out good growth, but didnt set much and now looks like its suffering under some unknown malaise. My initial thought was verticillium wilt but after reading a bit it seems like that would not affect the whole tree like this so I’m at a loss. Thanks in advance.
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I planted a summer delight aprium in spring 2020. This is the first time it’s really fruiting. For the most part, I think it looks healthy. But some of the fruit have weird moldy patches near the stem. It occurred on 7 fruit out of hundreds. I picked all the moldy fruit I could find and threw them away, but I have no idea what caused the mold or what I can do to fix it.
I don’t know if this info is helpful but I keep my tree pruned to around 8 feet. Because the tree hasn’t fruited before, I don’t really have a rigorous spray schedule yet, because I don’t yet know what it needs and when. So I only sprayed it with a mix of neem oil and copper right before the flower buds started to open. It’s pretty heavily loaded with fruit right now, and I haven’t thinned (again, cause I wasn’t sure how much to thin and when) so many of the fruit are touching their neighbors. Some pics for reference:
It’s kind of hard to see the fruits on the above pic cause, from that angle, they look the same color as the leaves. But they’re there.
And the above is a pic of the overall tree, in case poor pruning/shape might be a factor
Any thoughts on what might be causing the moldy fruit, and/or how to fix it, would be much appreciated! Thanks!
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Your fruit developed brown rot, a common stone fruit disease.
I use Indar, a fungicide to combat it. If you do not spray, it will get worse.
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Will do, thanks!
EDIT: Ay yah, Indar is expensive!
For anyone who might have bought Indar this year, would you be able or willing to sell me a smaller quantity? I live in a suburb of Philly, if there’s anyone local, but otherwise I’d be happy to pay for shipping. I only have 3 stonefruit trees, so I don’t think I need a whole gallon of the stuff. Maybe a pint, if anyone has a pint to spare?
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My tree is 1 year behind yours.
The general advice I see is that thinning could not only help with disease but prevent branch breakage.
I would remove ones
- with imperfections (like from bug bites) - attack vectors for disease
- at end of a very long branch - magnifies branch breaking capacity of fruit
- that are smaller than the rest
Some people thin to one fruit every few inches in each branch.
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I also noticed you’re planting per your profile: Peaches: Saturn Donut, white mystery peach, yellow mystery peach.
Do those not get rot for you? Saturn Donut peaches was said to be very rot prone https://growingfruit.org/t/scotts-stone-fruit-experiences-through-2022
The Saturn Donut has not had any rot issues (yet!). It was also planted in 2020. It fruited in 2021 with no disease issues (probably because diseases hadn’t found it yet?). In 2022, the saturn peaches fruited out nicely, but I went on a 2 week vacation during the two weeks before independence day, and when I returned the peaches had been completely eaten by, presumably, squirrels. So, I don’t know whether or not they would have had the chance to develop brown rot last year. This year, so far, there is no evidence of disease on the saturn peaches other than some mild peach leaf curl (which is what I had been spraying the neem/copper for). That being said, the peaches are smaller than the apriums, so maybe they haven’t had the chance to develop brown rot yet? This is what my saturn peaches look like right now:
The mystery peaches come from two trees at a neighbor’s house a few blocks away. I only just bud-grafted them in summer 2022, so they are not yet bearing and I can’t say anything from personal knowledge about their diseases. My neighbor does not spray the “mother” mystery trees, though, and has not said anything about brown rot or other fungal diseases on them. She only complains about insect damage and worms in some of her peaches.
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Brown rot has been talked about so much. So often.
If you do a search on this forum, you will gets tons of threads on brown rot. It is a serious threat that has no organic cure if your area is humid.
Please post on one of those brown rot threads. You will likely attract those who have “been there, done that” to respond to you.
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I have no issue with spraying, I just haven’t had the need to yet since my trees are still so young!
Brown rot is THE most devastating thing for stone fruit trees that there is. I’ve trashed so many trees over it.
I would add that even with spraying you are still going to lose some of the crop to brown rot. And that’s after you just lost the PC war.
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Based on what I read, the PC/bug and brown rot wars are related. The more pest damage your tree has, the more susceptible to disease it is.
Funny our apricots are the same size and I’m in zone 9a-b!
We had a mostly-mild winter here. It was completely snow-free, with just a few random freezes that I thought would ruin my stonefruits, but somehow didn’t.
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You are lucky!
Haha, but not lucky enough to escape brown rot, it seems!
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Brown rot showed up after my peach tree fruit for the 3rd year. The first two years I had perfect fruit with no spray. Like any newbies, I thought growing peaches was not as difficult as people said.
By year 4, all my peaches got brown rot. Myclobutanil did not work. (the label says it does). Once I have Indar, it has been much better but not 100%.
You are correct that all highly effective fungicide for brown rot is expensive including Luna Sensation. You need to fid the like-minded to split the cost.
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Mamuang is very right. My peach trees in the states did not get brown rot for a number of years. Here, I have seen peaches and apricots that were not well pollinated drop with a bit of brown on them. You will probably have a few more drop before the healthy peaches stay on the tree. Do you have squirrels? I would think about bagging the fruit.
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Saw this spider today (one of the two species known as a candy-striped spider), and it froze when I approached, but I am pretty sure it was munching on the aphids right next to its head:
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole (spider hole?) learning about this spider, but couldn’t find any reference to them eating aphids. But they seem willing to eat basically anything, including other spiders:
(source)
That paper found that they often attack bees, wasps, and flies that are sleeping on leaves or flowers at night, and they are very successful at it. I’d rather if they stick with aphids.
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Took a walk around the garden today and noticed this on my multi variety pluot tree. It’s only on one variety - splash pluot.
Is this something to be concerned about? If so what would you do? Thanks in advance!!
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That could be Black Knot.
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