I have an uncle who’s had pretty good success with peach trees for 50+ years. He said an older gentleman told him when he was first starting out how he kept borers away. He keeps an inch or two of wood ash around the base of the tree, in a ring perhaps a foot or so in radius out from the tree. He did stress to me that it must be replaced/refreshed at least yearly. I figured what the heck, I have an abundance of ash, I’ve been doing the same thing on my trees since 2017 or so.
Maybe it’s what’s working, maybe no borers here (doubtful), maybe the light coating of Neem is actually what’s working. Scott’s method of painting that on straight would seem to indicate a fairly dilute spray wouldn’t be effective though. I’ll keep ash around them until I see evidence it’s not working… So far though, a couple of (the oldest) trees at probably 3"+ diameter at ground level, are clean. Fingers crossed…
Smaller tree I put some around for the first time this year:
