Nice video, I grew this peach for a good number of years and it was pretty good, not great. The tree grows really fast and we live in an area where it doesn’t start getting cold till late October, so perfect peach climate. We used it a lot for capresse salads, which it was fabulous for. Fairtime is my favorite late season peach.
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I am glad to hear your Liz’s Late nectarines at least have good flavor.
I have one on order with TOA, I am trying to find peaches and nectarines that bloom later, as we get Spring cold and hail, even in May.
We have two Rio Oso Gem peaches, I am hoping they will bloom later. One in ground and one in a pot. I have read they are a later peach and I hope that indicates bloom not just ripening time. Last thing I want is something that blooms early and takes forever to ripen lol.
We are trialing in peaches:
Rio Oso Gem
Silver Logan
In Nectarines:
Honey Halo
Red Supreme #1
Harko
Liz’s Late (on order)
Spice Zee (ok to call a nectarine?)
Harko is absolutely gorgeous but of course had full bloom when it started hailing so we tried to protect it and we did get some fruit (over a dozen), but we missed when they were perfectly ripe because they were so small. They also had damage that looked like scab. It could be that we need to spray with spinosad or I also was told that could have been caused from cold damage. I will spray with spinosad and see what we get this year.
My husband liked the flavor of Harko’s fruit despite the fact that they were small and ugly.
It was Harko’s first try could’ve that been a reason for smaller fruit?
Peach leaf curl looks like a guaranteed battle here, I have sprayed with copper, but I still get it. I need to find a better solution or have better timing on when I spray. I still have a lot to learn. I hope some day to have a schedule in writing to manage our fruit trees, when to do what to what tree.
I feel like nectarines and peaches are worth the extra work, as long as the extra work works, of course.
Harko Is so beautiful that people they just want ornamentals should consider it.
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I want to eat that.
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What brand of Copper and is it used with a sticker?Something stronger,like Chlorothalonil(Daconil),may work better.
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Thank you for your questions.
We are using Captain Jack’s copper fungicide and I don’t think we’ve ever mixed it with anything that would be considered a sticker.
We do have Monterey horticultural oil. Would that be useful as a sticker?
There have been times when I thought we battled peach leaf curl effectively, but then we would get a spring frost and I would see new growth coming in looking affected, but I didn’t want to spray the tree again in fear of hurting pollinators because we had blooms present. I don’t feel like we had completely escaped it when that happened, though it was just more or less greatly improved before the spring frost.
I know this is probably going to happen every year, Spring frost, so I really need to find a program that works better than what I’ve been doing.
Maybe I’m not spraying it enough, maybe I just need a sticker or maybe my timing is off but I definitely need to develop some sort of yearly routine to keep peach leaf curl at bay.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Copper can be effective on leaf curl if pressure isn’t too high. Part of your trees problem might be the formulation of copper you are using. Captain Jack has very little metallic copper equivalent (MCE).
It contains 10% copper octanoate. It’s a nice formulation if you are trying to prevent leaf or bloom burn. But leaf curl sprays occur in the dormant season, so all that safety for phytotoxicity of foliage isn’t much of a concern. Instead you want a product which will hammer leaf curl.
There is more or less an inverse relationship of coppers which are easy on foliage and hard on leaf curl (i.e. easier on foliage = less effective on leaf curl).
The MCE for Captain Jack is 1.8%. Conversely the MCE for a good leaf curl copper like KOCIDE 3000 is 30%.
Running the numbers for actual dilute sprays of the product, in a nutshell, KOCIDE 3000 has 3 times the MCE of Captain Jack copper. More MCE = more effective control of leaf curl.
Here is a chart for MCE equivalents. It doesn’t specifically list Captain Jack, but does list Cueva Fungicide Concentrate, which has the same amount of active ingredient as Captain Jack (10% copper octanoate).
As Brady mentioned chlorthalonil rates better in efficacy for leaf curl than copper. It’s easily available for backyard orchardists. A couple trade names for it are Daconil and Fungonil.
Hort oil can act as a sticker. Generally speaking a sticker works best as a sticker, since that’s what it’s designed to do.
There’s a bunch of stickers available online. I happen to like NUFILM 17 because I’ve found it hardest to clean out of spray equipment of any I’ve tried. Stuff just won’t come off. But like I say, any sticker is probably going to do the job for you.
I don’t use a sticker for chlorothalonil as a dormant spray. I find it sticks pretty good by itself. But I’ve no doubt a sticker would improve performance.
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There was a close out on Monterey’s Liqui-Cop,at my local Home Depot,a few years ago,so I’ve been using that,with either Southern AG or Hi-Yield stickers.Also mixed in,is some ThermX70,that came from Peaceful Valley/Grow Organic.It is made from Yucca and is fairly thick.Any kind of product,advertised as a sticker should work,although Nufilm is suppose to be the best.
Daconil is also being used,because of Brown Rot Blossom and Twig Blight,on my Plums,Apricots and Cherries,which Copper doesn’t control.So,every Prunus is sprayed with it also.
Thank you so much for that information. I didn’t even realize that the copper formulation said different percentages.
Do you think I could use the one I have and make it more concentrated or do you think it’s better to just get the one with 30%?
I can tell that I have a huge amount of peach leaf curl pressure and it’s something I’m going to have to deal with the rest of my life.
It’s just a bummer because I have been unable to beat it so far so I really appreciate your response.
Sorry for taking so long to respond, but thank you so much for your suggestions and we have planted quite a few plums and we are brand new to fruit trees so we’re kind of learning as we limp along and this forum has been a wealth of information. I am so grateful for it.
I will check out that nufilm and formulate a plan of attack against peach leaf curl.
So far here we have had mostly peach leaf curl problems, and I have an almond tree with what looks like gummosis and now an apricot that has sap coming out of where the buds are. I can’t tell if that’s due to the hailstorm we had or some sort of disease, but I did have it under a big tree to shelter it from the hail.
With the almond, I scrubbed the spot with an old toothbrush and hydrogen peroxide till it looked totally clean and I haven’t seen the gummy stuff come back, looks like it dried up. I’m keeping an eye on it, but I’m guessing that’s something that copper might help? I will have to research this problem.