Peach tree leaves

Why are these leaves changing colors.

We need a lot more detail, please.
Where are you located?
How old is the tree?
What variety?
What’s your weather condition recently?
Any spray?
Is this the first time this happens?
Can you show a pic of the base of the tree, too?

Themore info, the better people can help you with. The tree definitely looks stressed.

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So many distorted leaves. Is that from peach leaf curl? Did you spray for peachleaf curl prevention? Just asking since so many leaves in the photo are puckered and twisted.

It doesn’t look like leaf curl to me.

Can someone with bacterial leaf spot experience comment on these photos? I am suspicious, but uncertain…

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I had something similar, but with more dark red spots. Either Immunox or sulphur killed it.

I am located in eastern Iowa zone 5a. The tree is 6 years old. It is a July Alberta. We had a wet spring but not overly wet. The last week has been warm and humid with highs in the upper 80’s and low 90’s. I sprayed it last week with captan, rally, and imidan. This is the first time they have changed color to an orange color. I will get more pictures tomorrow. There are only a couple peaches on it this year. Last year it didn’t have any. The winter before last was extremely cold and the tree took a long time in the spring to get any decent leaves.

Could it be phototoxicity from the chemicals you used esp. Captan?

Maybe, @alan or Mark @olpea could chime in.

Tippy, why are you especially suspicious of captan? Sounds like there may be a link here that I don’t know about…

Just a guess. Captan could cause phototoxicity… The only article I found is about tank mix and on apples.

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Tippy is right of course. Captan can burn the leaves. Indeed I do see some shothole in the leaves, which Captan can cause.

That said, I don’t think that’s necessarily the issue with this tree. Looking closely at the photos, I see a lot of leaves where the whole leaf is yellow. Captan generally damages the tips more than anything when used by backyard growers. That’s because spraying with a wand generally causes the spray to run down the individual leaves and consolidate at the tips, where it does the most damage.
In commercial orchards, with an airblast sprayer, the Captan will have more even coverage on the individual leaves without running down to the tips. Therefore, if there is Captan burn, the burn will be more evenly distributed and give the more classic shothole appearance.

There are of course other things which cause shothole, mainly the pathogen x. campestris, which causes bacterial spot. That’s what I think is going on here.

July Elberta is known to be very susceptible to bac. spot. The conditions where ideal for it this spring.

Also there could be some environmental stress going on. We had such a wet spring, which can stress peach trees which aren’t extremely well drained. Peach trees planted on flat ground in IA are probably going to be stressed in any but the very best drained locations. Additionally, as far I can tell, it looks like there is sod either right up to the trunk, or very close to it. This will also stress the tree. In fact, even some of the healthy leaves look stressed.

Lastly, it’s not uncommon for peaches to become stressed in hot dry weather and lose a few yellow leaves. However, Stamper’s tree looks excessively stressed, probably due to the variety and conditions mentioned.

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This thread really has my interest since I have seen similar issues from time to time with my trees. It always seems to be after I spray. I, like Tippy, am somewhat suspicious of Captan, but struggle to really distinguish between phytotoxicity and a fungal or bacterial infection. I did just run across a piece of information from Penn State that I was not aware of:

“Captan and sulfur will also cause phytotoxicity (symptoms will be similar to copper injury).”

Here is the link to the full article:
https://extension.psu.edu/peach-disease-bacterial-spot-differentiation-from-copper-injury

It focuses mainly of differentiating copper pytotoxicity from bacterial spot, but the little tidbit on Captan and Sulphur was insightful for me because I like to spray sulphur, but sometimes apply Captan. My older leaves are always the ones that are affected. From the article, note the tendency for phytotoxicity to impact older leaves first.

Kevin, That’s with copper. I can’t recall for sure, but I don’t think that’s the case with Captan burn. It’s been a while since I’ve read about it, but I think new leaves are more susc. to burn with Captan.

Also, remember the copper damage they show in the article is the result of an airblast sprayer, which has a dot like spray pattern. Airblast sprayers are designed to give even coverage in a sort of dot like pattern. It’s difficult to mimic that with a wand sprayer, which would give different coverage. Wands tend to either completely wet the leaves, or give very uneven coverage, which would change the pattern of phytotoxic damage.

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A week after I noticed the Orange colored leaves they have fallen off the tree and seems to be in the same condition as it was before I sprayed the tree. I think it was probably phytotoxic damage caused by the captan being sprayed during the hot weather. The poor tree just can’t get a break. The farmer that I rent crop ground to broke a branch off with a piece of hay making equipment.

[quote=“Olpea, post:10, topic:30074”]
it’s not uncommon for peaches to become stressed in hot dry weather and lose a few yellow leaves.
[/quote] :+1:

My peach and nectarine trees get yellow leaved that drop pretty much every summer. :wink:

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I was going to say it was " burned" I refer to this as Loving to Death… Leaf Curl Leaves crinkle fast & turn brown from orange/ yellow.
My role of thumb is kinda…All yellow lacking…
All Orange Too Much…
But , im a newbie at best…
By the Way, weve lost more trees to Farm Equipment than anything Else by far… I wont set mine out until they are well established anymore. I have several peach trees in buckets … lol.

Did plant one in my backyard behind my office.
Currently Dozen in Buckets.