Dawn, what insecticide you use to kill gypsy moths. Is the insecticide labeled for fruit tree. If not, you should not eat the fruit. if the insecticide is good to use on fruit tree, spray a month ago is too long to protect your tree. Good cover spray work about 10-14 days depending on how much rain you get. Also, to help spray stay on longer, you need to use sticker like Bonide Turbo mixing in with the spray. There is a good chance that insects Oriental Fruit Moth or Plum Curculio punctured the skin of those peaches to lay eggs which will hatch to be larvae that move inside ppeaches to feed. Fruit will drop and when you cut them open, you will see tumpnnels or even worms inside. Check those fruit that have clear gel carefully to see if there is tiny holes on the area. If so, pick them off. Throw them out with trash. Do not let fruit lie around under the tree or compost it. You will help their life cycle that way. Spray with insecticide labeled for peach trees.

Appleseed, You are correct, we do have pretty heavy clay based soil here. You don't have to dig very far to get to pure clay. That said, the top 12" of soil has a lot of organic matter (around 6%) but the soil in general gets very saturated w/ water because of the clay subsoil. Really a very poorly drained soil overall. Obtaining enough wood chips has always been a problem. In a good year I can get about 60 loads. This year I've been able to obtain about 70 dump truck loads, so it's been a good year. One company needed to get rid of about 60 loads, so that helped a lot. I've had fairly poor luck getting mulch from the big companies who do tree trimming for utilities, like Asplundh and Wright. Around here, they seem to have their usual places to dump and don't like to deviate. I've not paid for mulch yet, and I doubt I will. If I were to have to pay for mulch, I think I'd just go ahead and skip it. It costs quite a bit to spread it anyway. To pay for it, would make it cost prohibitive. I spread the mulch using rented equip., or I just hire someone with a skid steer to spread the mulch. I've done both, and it's about the same cost. The people who deliver the wood chips don't spread them. They just dump them wherever you tell them too. I used to own a road grader and spread some wood chips with that. That went real fast. I could spread a whole load in about one pass. I'd drive up over the top of the load and push it down the aisle spreading it as I went. In terms of labor, it's pretty much my son and I. We only have about 300 peach trees (plus some apples, plums, cherries) so we can fairly easily do it ourselves. I hope to avoid hiring a bunch of labor. I'm friends w/ another commercial peach grower and he has expanded to such a point he hires a lot of outside labor. He told me this summer, he sometimes wishes he was back to the same 100 peach trees he started out with, with just him and his wife. He said life was a lot simpler back then. I do have a tow behind (airblast sprayer). I think it would be very difficult to spray numerous trees without one. Basically, it would take me forever to spray 300+ trees with a wand. I spend a ton of time spraying the 50 fruit trees in my backyard with a wand sprayer. As it happens, I'm currently working on my airblast sprayer at the house now. One of the v-belt pulleys is worn out. The pulley takes 8 v-belts, but it burns up the belts pretty fast because the pulley is worn. I'm planning to convert it to a synchronous (geared) belt system. I've been on the phone all day working w/ a guy trying to design a geared belt system for this sprayer.

Some of my customers worry about every unexpected thing they see on their trees- which I like, because it means they're concerned, but I still have to bill them every time they insist I drive out to inspect the latest non-problem. I'm not saying that you're behaving like a mother of an only child- the insects may be truly alarming, but generally no harm- no foul. If you see only insects and no symptoms you can probably relax. I suggest you find a source of info on common fruit pests in your area that contains photos and start to learn the faces of our true roster of villains. This will make your thoughtful surveilance much more useful to your trees and the process much more satisfying. Or you can post pictures here of every insect you find on your trees. The funny thing is that most of the insects that do real damage you seldom see if you don't trap them.

Lisa, Thinning refers to removing fruit, not pruning. It can be confusing because there is a term called, "thinning cuts", which refer to a type of pruning. However, when the word thinning is used in the context of fruit, it simply means removing some of the fruit and has nothing to do with pruning. Removing some of the fruit is beneficial because it allows the fruit remaining to become much bigger. It prevents broken branches because too many fruits will weigh branches down and break them. It also keeps trees healthier because it prevents over-cropping. So Jellyman was telling you to "thin-off" all the oozing peaches first (since they will be no good anyway). Then make sure there is a minimum of 6" or more of branch space between the remaining fruits. If there is not a minimum of 6-8" of branch space, then keep removing fruit until you've met that criteria. It's not unusual to remove 80% or more of the fruit from a peach tree. If you still have some good fruits left on the tree, it would be advisable to protect those with an insecticide. Triazicide Once and Done is a good choice and available at Walmart. You asked if it is OK to prune now. There may be no need to prune now, but if you feel a need, it is OK to prune now. Just understand when you prune off wood, you may be pruning off some fruit too. Naturally, any wood that is pruned, also removes the fruit attached to it. For leaf curl, you can spray either in the fall or spring (under heavy pressure) or just in the spring. For a fall spray, spray after the trees loose their leaves. Not every single leaf has to be gone, but the tree needs to be pretty bare when you spray it. Being a long way from MA, I have no idea what month this would occur. For the leaf curl spring spray, spray sometime before the buds start to swell. The idea is you want the peach trees still fully dormant when you apply the spring spray. Once the trees start waking up in the spring, it's too late to protect them against leaf curl. My guess is as soon as your winter snow melts would be a good time to get out there and spray for leaf curl. One side effect is your neighbors will think you're crazy spraying bare trees. For entertainment, you can encourage this perception by watering your trees while it's snowing. Do this while wearing a nightgown.