Peach trees with weird ooze

Doing some tree maintenance and this is the first ive looked as we come into spring. All three of my trees have this sappy ooze at the bottom. Trees are 5ish yearsold. Ideas? Concerns?

My guess is the work of peach tree borers. Use a clothes hanger wire and pushing around looking for borers’ holes. You may have several of them.

Check out this thread.
Peach tree Borer Activity - Mid Atlantic Region - #3 by AngelOreo.

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Definitely borers.

Definitely squish them and do the neem paint on the lower trunk.

I have had great success with beneficial nematodes but still have gotten borer strikes up in the tree

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How much digging do i do for them and not hurt the trees? Neem paint when and how often? Im surprised to see this as it has barely warmed here. Any chemical treatment to stop the borers?

How does one prevent them to begin with?

Where are you located? Please add your zone and location on your profile. People can give you better advice when they know where you grow your fruit trees.

You won’t hurt it by digging out the borers. You are saving your tree. Borers have bored in your tree, often at the soil line and a bit below it. You can clear off soil/dirt an inch or more below a soul line around the tree.

Use a stright wire or a sharp knife to scrap off some bark looking for holes. When you find borers’ holes, try to get borers out and kill them.

I like using clothes hanger wire and insert it inside each hole to get borers out. Stabbing them with wire gave me a satisfactory revenge.
Some holes go straight in the tree, some go down, others go up. Make sure you really search thoroughly around the base of the tree.

100% neem paste smearing at the base is an organic approach method. You can also spray with insecticide like permethrin but that needs to be once a month in June, July and August if you are in the Northeast.

I am in the northeast. Borers attacked my peach trees in early April when temp was still quite chilly.

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Your seeing damage from last fall. Any dead bark can be removed and that will help the tree heal over the wounds. You want to kill the larvae eating on your tree now and the best bet is with a wire just dont be too rough and you wont hurt the tree at all.

You can do a dunk of spinosad around the trunk and base of each tree. The neem paint is a better deterrent. Traps are effective as well as beneficial nematodes that hang out in your soil and also kill the japanese beetle larvae. If you use permethrin or other chemical pesticides you will kill the good guys we still have around here.

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Triazicide killed mine. I sprayed for them after losing a Bavay plum and nectarine to them.

Thanks. I am in denver colorado usa. It is barely spring here.

I do neem paint up to the lowest branches, correct?

Best application time for the beneficial nematodes in colorado?

No, only at and near the base.

Please read this by the founder of this forum. It has a lot of great info including the type of neem and how to apply.

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Once the soil warms up so around may spread out and then watered into the yard. If you use a sprayer it needs to not have pesticides in it before.

If you see dead spots in your lawn or near some of your trees it’s probably JB larvae. Nematodes infect them also as well as milky spore.

I say not to worry about pesticides because both of these pests fly from far away and you will never knock out the source with pesticide sprays you will just poison your area and stop the predators

Im reading on nematodes and it looks like different strains for peach/wood borers and jb. Do you have one you like for all-in-one?

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Yeah so my favorite for basically most everyone here in the usa and certainly the west is the Triple Blend pack of SF, SC and HB.

Nematodes are pretty amazing and the ones that overwinter here best are usually the deep dwelling species but the mix is best as they all kind of attack different larval forms and different species and all work in conjunction with each other. The HB will hit all grubs and if you just want to buy a single species is probably the best. The sc do best on the peach borers and the codling moth. The SF do the best on the young larval forms of insects that pray on the roots.

For many people down south and out east with parasitic nematodes who are pretty much resistant to most chemical controls usually what the systemic pesticides do is just knock out your beneficial nematode population that keep those parasitic nematodes and fleas in check. For people wanting to eradicate fleas the SC nematodes in heavy amounts have done excellent for many people i know.

heh heh heh . . . Borer therapy anger management. Works for me!

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