First of all, a big THANKS for the help i’ve received from you all so far…
We’ve had a super wet April/May here in New England and I didn’t get any sprayings in during those months…it rained 75% of the days and I had personal/biz stuff going on most of the non-rainy days it seemed.
As a result of input from this group, I ordered some Bonide Infuse, and just did my first spraying yesterday. I noticed that there are already small peaches showing signs of brown rot - several per tree, plus twigs showing the black, wilted ends.
IS IT ALREADY TOO LATE ? Should I remove all the peaches and focus on the health of the trees using topical fertilizers ? Or is there a chance I might get a harvest ? We are in a pattern in which its raining every 3 days or so.
We had a rainy July/August last year and once it started, I couldn’t stop it. Granted I wasn’t using Infuse last year…but I can’t do another spraying of Infuse for 21 days according to the directions. There are also some yellow leaves that have dropped off the tree as well. So – even though it’s gonna kill me to have two yrs in a row of total loss - it might be better to focus on the tree and ditch all the peaches. I only have six medium sized trees.
There are several New England members here. We can feel your pain. I lost an entire peach crop to brown rot one year and to late freeze another year.
If you are sure all your peaches are infected, you can remove entire crop. Save the trees their energy. Brown rot gets worse as peaches ripen. I thought some of mine were affected. As fruit ripened they had signs and all were bad.
Throw them in trash. Do not compost.
Flagged shoot are sign of Oriental Fruit moths. You can use insecticide spray not just fruit but tips of shoots, too.
If I recall correctly Infuse has no PHI because it’s considered acceptable to use up until the day of harvest type product. When there’s no PHI listed there is no PHI.
The 21 day interval is only that, saying you should make applications every 21 days is all.
If it were me I wouldn’t probably remove all the fruit, if all the fruit were not showing signs. I’d remove the bad ones and hit it again with Infuse if it’s been 21 days since last application, if not I’d at least hit it with Immunox which is also labeled for up to day of harvest.
I got slammed with brown rot last year for the first time. It was a very wet year and I just couldn’t get out to spray(very much like how this year started). Till I saw what was going on I lost half my cherries, all my nectarines and about a quarter of my peaches.
I did manage to save some of my peaches by picking all the obviously infected fruit and spraying several times with captan as they ripened, culling out some bad ones along the way. This year I went to Indar and haven’t seen any signs of BR yet.
In humid east coast, brown rot will you show on your stone fruit. It’s only a matter of time. I used to think I was great growing peaches with no spray. Got perfect peaches. Then, Oriental fruit moths, plum curculios, stink bugs, tarnished plant bugs, coddling moths, brown rot have showed to teach me a lesson.
For some orchards, it may take up to 5 years for brown rot to arrive. I was not that lucky. By year 3, brown rot arrive. If you don’t spray fungicide (some work better than the other), you won’t have clean fruit. For those in the humid east coast, it’s very difficult to grow stone fruit, peaches, nectarines, plums, cherries, without spray.
If you plan to spray Bonide Infuse again, buy a Bonide product called Bonide Turbo. It’s spreader/sticker. Mix it in with Infuse (propiconazole). It will help Infuse chemical stays on the fruit/tree longer.
Try to spray when you know the weather will be dry for the next 24 hours. I know we have a lot of rain. When there is no rain, it’s too windy, sometimes. I’m in the same boat.
Getting hit hard by OFM right now with a lot of flagging. Is it too late to spray? I tried to research it but the whole first flight, second flight thing overwhelmed me a bit. I’m thinking of using Bt and/or spinosad.
Probably too late for this generation of the insect… There will be at least two more generations this summer. You need to spray insecticide every 2-3 weeks to protect from it.
I more or less follow Penn State Extension’s recommended schedule (image below). I rotate products, to minimize the potential for pests developing resistance. I also add NuFilm and Serenade with almost every spray.
