I just noticed the base of our fantasia nectarine is missing bark and looks gunky. Is this from a fungus? Or a pest? Any hope of saving it? We planted it April 2016.
That tree was damaged by something hitting it. It is common for such wounds to ooze. My guess is it will eventually heal over and be OK.
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I agree with Scott, and, it looks like a repetitive injury, as you can see signs of a previous attempt to heal.
Patty S.
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Thank you! Is there anything I can do to help the healing process? I’ve also been waiting to prune until a little closer to spring, should I wait until the base has healed to prune?
Just try not to look at it 
There is enough bark around the tree that it won’t affect the growth.
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I agree with Scott in that tree was hit by something!! However it looks to me like you also have contracted bacterial canker distinguished by the red flecking below the ooze. If it was my tree I would scrape out red flecking with sharp knife and seal with graft seal or pruning seal. I would definitely recommend summer pruning, july, august. I would also take scion wood from that tree and graft it somewhere else! Where I’m at that tree would be history in a few years from obtrusive borrers!! I may be wrong in your zone 5 though! Good luck!!
I have had many injuries oozing like that and they all healed themselves fine on their own. This doesn’t look like canker to me but there is a chance it could be. But even if it is canker I would leave it alone on a peach. Only cherries need cankers cut out.
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Scott is probably right, he is much closer to your zone. You could smell your tree by the wound, if it doesn’t smell sour or vinegary you should be fine. BC is more of a problem with apricots, cherries, and plum, favoring shallow, hardpan, acidic, nitrogen deficient soils. Good luck!
I have similar injury on the apricot tree. It is growing fine for 4 years now, no problem.
Being that you are in a cold climate by Georgia standards you are probably fine. If you were in SE Georgia, I would say pull it out. If that is not stem canker, with a wound that big the tree will surely get it soon enough anyway. If I accidentally nick a plum tree, I immediately wash the wound down with bleach and spray it with a waxy horticultural pain with fungicides and bactericides mixed in. Well, maybe peaches are more forgiving about this stuff than plums. But still, I would consider washing that with a bleach solution and painting over it. God bless.
Marcus
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. Horticulturists now say never dress a wound, studies show it does more damage. Bleach does work, but you better mix it right. So current thinking is you only use a sealer on oaks to prevent oak wilt.
If you can quote any studies that say otherwise, I’m always open to new thinking with evidence it works. So far the studies are showing you’re hurting the trees using wound dressing.
Painting the wound, I don’t know if that would help or not? It will prevent sun damage to the wound.
You might want to remove the vegetation around the base of the tree. It provides cover for pests that attack the trunk.
I was just thinking the other day we should remove the grass around the base of the tree. When I told my husband that on here people said it was from being struck he remembered last fall he accidentally got it with the weed whacker rolls my eyes. I didn’t realize he had removed the deer fence to weed whack around it.
While in town I noticed trees that were cleared and had bark dust or mulch around the base to keep the grass at bay. Not only to keep pests away, as you mentioned, it’ll keep my husband from wanting to mow around the tree again this summer.
A day or so after my original post we had a heavy rain, and it seemed to have cleaned away all of the gunk I previously noticed. If I hadn’t looked when I had, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed anything was a miss.