I planted new tree about three weeks ago and it is heavily bleeding; three other new peaches don’t do that after similar pruning. Is it deadly fungal infection? Of course, I put whole pruners into jar with 99% alcohol before the cut:
I made fresh 0.5" cut from top, bark looks still green but centre of trunk looks not so good (unusual). I put copper fungicide powder on top of fresh cut, although article above says peaches don’t like copper. If I introduced it then maybe I can save it… other freshly planted peaches don’t have this issue. At first I thought it is regular ‘bleeding’ but no, it is kind of disease…
Looks like the tree is goner, I made few more cuts after initial cut (total 7 centimetre) and bark/cambium although not brown as in this pictures but looks watery and soft… maybe I need to cut 10 cm more? perhaps tree was dead already; other four trees from same nursery have green buds on a short trunk after similar pruning.
Really odd, the white stuff looks like a mildew and the top orange bleeding looks like bacterial infection. That really looks bad i would try to return it if that was a option as that is a insane amount of disease for three weeks in the ground. Is the white stuff salt or some calcium spray (it looks like mildew of some form)
Okay now i can see where it wept all the way down the tree but that’s not really something i have seen happening before, I would return that as many times as i could
I checked my records, this peach is in the ground less than two weeks. I ordered three peaches and two plums from same nursery and I cut off trunk on all and all have green buds coming from trunk except this one; perhaps it was already dead. Other two trees came even with flower buds. Ok, I sent them Email; shouldn’t be an issue to send replacement to me, returning customer. Even if I introduced disease (I use jar with alcohol to rinse pruners!) - this peach obviously is weak… might be my fault too, but other trees are stronger.
Funniest thing is the description of this cultivar, Resistant to canker and bacterial spot.
Peach ‘Redstar’
An improved Redhaven cultivar. Sink your teeth into one of these big, beautiful peaches at the peak of ripeness! Large (up to 3” across), round fruit has 80% rich, red color over a subtle striped background. The flesh is medium-yellow and has a wonderful true-peach flavor. Redstar® stores well, bruises less and has very few split pits. The tree itself has a spreading habit and is very tough and productive. Resistant to canker and bacterial spot.
To me it just looked dead. Probably always was. A peach should be able to live years with canker. Not a death sentence. Well the fungal type. Mine is 8 years old and got it the first year. It looks better now, left a nasty scar.
Yup that tree was DOA. It probably got roasted somewhere along the way from its original planting to you, prolonged heat exposure causes rots like that.
To compare, another peach tree from same nursery, perhaps I had to do such drastic cut in different time of year, we had night frosts and even snow & hail past week; obviously some rotting happens but nevertheless this tree looks 10x stronger:
I believe that some nurseries dig up their trees and store them for the winter. If this tree died during storage and began to decay, it would explain why it looks like this. I had a similar bad experience with a nursery years ago and the trees looked like they had had moss or mold washed off of them before shipping. This looks like the kind of decay that is typically on the roots of a dead tree.
I would ask for a refund or exchange, and if the situation is not handled to your liking be sure to post on Dave’s Garden Watch Dog.
