The peaches on one of my elberta peach trees look deformed and molded. This appeared to happen over the last several days. Do you know what this is.
Thanks for your help.
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Wow, I have never seen that severe amount of mold before. Poor you!!! Time for Indar!
Where are you located?
You’re sure those aren’t mummies from last year?
Hi, I am in Stafford County in Virginia.
Thanks for your reply. Yes I believe it is this year. I can take some pictures of them hanging from the tree.
Hi Dave,
I am am southwest of you in Lynchburg, Va. I have two Elberta trees and both were loaded this year. I can’t tell for sure but the size of the peach looks too big for this time of the year. Maybe the mold is distorting the pic/size? I have only had mummies once but they look identical. I have sprayed my trees 3 to 4 times with Indar but I have not sprayed in the last 3 to 4 weeks, so far no mold or fungus issues on my peaches. Are you spraying your trees? Is it all peaches or just some on the affected tree? If you have not sprayed I would go to home Depot and pick up some immunox as a preventive on your other trees. - Spud
Spud,
Thanks for the advice. I was very late in spraying all my trees and unfortunately I have lost a fruit. Very disappointing but a learning experience. The mummies only shown up on one tree. The squirrels and or coons have also ate some of the fruit-kind of frustrating. Plums have been hit with PC. Provided below is pictures of the one tree. I need to prune this tree it is getting to tall but I am afraid to do so still it appears to be growing well. I have been reading the posts on whether to prune in the summer or when the tree is dormant.
Hi Dave,
As far as pruning goes I bet you could ask 10 different people on this forum and get 10 different answers. Let me share my experience/view. First off my soil is all over the place - all clay but in many places the topsoil has been scraped off so often I get smaller/runted trees but not always. To help with this I often plant in 4 ft x 4ft raised containers. I did not prune trees much the past two years due to low/no yield on my peach trees and it was a huge mistake. I have two 5 year old Elbertas planted in better soil and they grew to 20 - 25 ft in diameter somewhere around twenty foot tall at the start of this season. This year mother nature was nice to me and I got a full set on many of my peach trees. I literally had thousands of peaches on one of the Elberta trees. At that size and that tall it was impossible to thin the peaches, the limbs were to weak to support much of the crop and i would never have been able to harvest the higher peaches even if nature had thinned the peaches for me. Long story short I had to do a major trimming job in May - I cut off a small pickup truck load of branches. I had to take a pruning saw and cut branches that were 4 to 8 inches think. After that I still had to thin the peaches, and I am still thinning
peaches now (see pics from 2 days ago). What I should have been doing with prior pruning was making sure i was pruning to promote good strong branches and open center for proper sunlight. When you are not getting many peaches which was my case it is hard to prune. Mother nature forced my hand and I had to do a quick hack job. Even with pruning in May my Elberta trees have put on a HUGE amount of new growth. In prior years i had pruned all the way through July - it never hurt the tree although if the summer was dry i did not always get new growth. Long story short I have pruned through July and never hurt a peach tree. I believe it is better to prune in March but i do not believe you can hurt a healthy peach tree pruning through July in Virginia. I might be hesitant to prune a first year in the ground peach in July. Below are peaches thinned two days ago off the Elberta tree, a Hale Haven (Maybe) and an unknow Nectarine.
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I appreciate the advice. I am not sure if I will be able to get to it by July 1st. I may wait until March. I find it hard to thin fruit from any of my trees. I guess it will be easier when the trees fruit consistently. Thanks for the help.
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