I had a Red Haven peach that I planted last year get hit with leaf curl pretty bad in the early spring.
All the treatments I read about were more about prevention in early spring rather than a cure…there was an article at the Winter Cove Farm site about using a Garlic treatment once a week to knock out the leaf curl . (https://wintercovefarm.com/stop-peach-leaf-curl-naturally/).
I was skeptical - but I know the folks at Winter Cove -and thought -“What the heck ?”. I have been spraying it once a week with the prescribed dosage (1/4 cup per gallon) and believe it or not - it seems to have taken care of most of it.
I’m watering the tree as well, and have put Sea Crop and minerals from advancingecoag.org in the water as well. But the leaf curl is mostly gone. Tree putting out new growth and looks OK. Its not knocking it out of the park as far as growth, but at least it doesn’t have alot of infected leaves on it.
Plus the orchard smells a bit like an Italian restaurant.
Here leaf curl naturally goes away by itself. That is, once the tree is infected, those leaves slowly fall off and are replaced by new healthy ones. So, at least in my climate, the results from using garlic would be no different than doing nothing.
The caveat would be if the garlic actually healed the deformed leaves. Maybe that’s what you mean? I would find that very surprising, given how misshapen PLC leaves are, but anything is possible.
I also suppose in some climates where PLC pressure is high, that it’s possible PLC just keeps going and going with new leaves continuing to contract PLC as the old leaves fall off. Maybe that’s what the article is referring to? In that case, the garlic would be somewhat of a preventative, not a treatment, at least in my way of thinking.
It would be nice to be able to test the garlic against a control, but it sounds like you didn’t have that option.
I had plc,on my remaining tree,this spring. Ive also seen the infected leaves fall,to be replaced by new. weve had a terrible, late spring this year, both with annuals and perrenials in the garden. If my trees blossomed at all, the cold did them in.
