Peach Tree Disease(?) Help

15 years ago

I planted a peach tree (Belle of Georgia) 2-3 weeks back that appeared perfectly healthy when planted. Since that time there are leaves which are showing signs (in my very novice opinion) of some type of disease. There are no obvious signs of insect damage that I can find. Below are some links to images I took of the leaves. If anyone has thoughts on what the cause may be and how to remedy it I would appreciate the advice.

Thanks.

http://picasaweb.google.com/seanparcel/Fruit_Trees/photo#5205785575217583906

http://picasaweb.google.com/seanparcel/Fruit_Trees/photo#5205785579512551218

http://picasaweb.google.com/seanparcel/Fruit_Trees/photo#5205785579512551234

http://picasaweb.google.com/seanparcel/Fruit_Trees/photo#5205785583807518546

http://picasaweb.google.com/seanparcel/Fruit_Trees/photo#5205785583807518562

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Comments (8)

jellyman
15 years ago
sparcel:

Here are some things that would be useful to know in trying to figure out your problem:

1. Where, exactly, in Ohio are you located? North or south? High country or low? Have you had very chilly nights since you planted the tree?

2. Was this a bareroot tree that you ordered in by mail or online, or was it a container tree from a local nursery that was already leafed out when you purchased it?

If you took a container tree out of a protected nursery environment and placed it in an exposed location, a couple of light frosts could cause the damage in your photos, or I should say photo, since I only looked at the first one. Next time order a bareroot tree from a reliable nursery rather than a container tree and you will avoid these kinds of problems.

Belle of Georgia will be a tough variety for you to grow. It is an old peach, with no resistance to bacterial spot, which is a problem throughout most of the east. It is also a soft peach, and very susceptible to brown rot late in the season. Belle of Georgia is a delicious white peach where it can be grown well, but you might be better off with a more modern variety that has a better chance of avoiding these problems.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA
Scott F Smith
15 years ago
That looks like sunburn to me -- tree went from low sun to high sun when you transplanted it. If that is what it is, you are over the hump already and the new leaves will look fine.

Scott
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Joni, now is the time to act. First thing is to get the fungicides going; start with a liquid copper/dormant oil mix at this time, and after the tree blooms spray with captan. Those two actions will get you into the cycle of treating your tree, but must be followed up with a succession of treatments that you can find on the extension service's website. I recommend digging out the soft wood and eggs; discard. Peaches need to be thinned to about one every eight inches. This will take stress off the limbs and give you nicer fruit. Do this when the peachlets are about the size of a pea or marble. Even so, if your limbs are loaded with big, juicy queens, you will need to prop up the limbs for support. You should have a nice harvest this year if you follow these steps. Good luck. Misterbaby.
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cough: 1. If you have already planted 8 peach trees, and are still looking for more, I invite you to consider the following sincerely offered suggestions: a) Make sure you know what is involved in growing 1-3 peach trees before you plant a lot more. Growing peaches is difficult even for experienced backyard growers. Peaches can have a lot of insect and disease problems, and usually do. Do not believe anyone who tells you they are easy to grow "organically". b) Before planting a lot of any one thing, have a plan for the use of the fruit in the event you actually get some production. 2. I have a pretty good-size backyard orchard here, and currently have 5 peach trees. I could actually get by with three good varieties, one early, one late-midseason, and one good peento (flat) type. This year, 3 of the trees produced heavily, a mature Golden Jubilee, a young Contender, and a young (white) Sugar Giant. The Contender ripened extremely early -- July 7, and, since early peaches are not much good for freezing, we had to hustle to eat or give away the more than 50 peaches this tree produced. They are all ripe within a period of a week. The average person, weighing less than 300 lbs., can eat a maximum of 2 large peaches per day. Next to ripen was Sugar Giant, a sweet peach without a lot of flavor. It suffered badly from bacterial spot, and at least half the peaches were thrown out. This peach, a modern variety from the Zaiger program in California, was a mistake to plant here. 3. Because of the 4-day Easter freeze, the Flat Wonderful peento type had only a dozen peaches, but they were truly fine eating, and early to ripen. They have a firm flesh, but wonderful flavor. Because of their odd shape, peento peaches are difficult to cut up and prepare for freezing. The little pit resides right in the middle of the doughnut, and the peach does not split apart like a large freestone. If this tree produces a full crop next season, we will again be shoveling them in shortly after Contender is gone. I would be cautious about planting any of the white peento varieties, which are likely to be far more sensitive to brown rot and other maladies. 4. Golden Jubilee is a late-midseason peach, and this mature (12 year) tree was an abundant producer this year, with about 125 peaches, of which at least 3 dozen weighed one pound or more. My spouse froze 16 quarts of these peaches, which are firm, easy to prepare, and fine for freezing. But we still have a dozen of these peaches in the refrigerator. They ripened the last few days of August and early September. 5. The bottom line here is: I really don't know what we would do with any more peaches. Once you have figured out how to grow them, and protect them against all their enemies, they can be very abundant. After two early sprays with Imidan against plum curculio, and careful thinning, all my peaches were bagged in try-on "footies", which protected them against insects (mainly oriental fruit moth) for the balance of the season. And very effectively - without any further spraying. Footie installation is, however, tedious, and calls for some acquired skill. 6. If you are going to grow peaches, you should become familiar as soon as possible with diseases such as bacterial spot (on the fruit), bacterial canker (on the limbs), and insects like the plum curculio (early) and oriental fruit moth (all season long). After that, you can get some advice here on how to deal with those problems. You should select the varieties to plant very carefully, based on such factors as their ripening times, and resistance to diseases like bacterial spot. Planting what Home Depot happens to have on hand is not the best way to choose your peach varieties. 7. Without considerable effort to learn the essentials of peach growing, you can plant 100 trees and still not get any decent, usable peaches. On the other hand, two or three carefully chosen peach varieties, with the right care, can produce enough peaches to make your family tired of eating peaches, and the neighbors too. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA
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rivermom: Let's clear up a few things that could provide some clues. Where did you get this tree, exactly when in "late spring" did you plant it, and how did it arrive (i.e. potted, rootballed, or bare root). Was it already leafing out when you planted? If you purchased a container tree from a local source, such as Home Despot or Lowes's, or even a local nursery, it may already have been diseased when you planted it. In fact, since the disease has developed in August, it almost certainly was. So don't buy any more trees where you bought that one. Second, container trees often do poorly when compared with bareroot trees, and all fruit trees are best planted in very early spring, which would probably be March or early April where you live (please tell us where that is in the very large state of Texas). Bare root trees are usually purchased from mailorder or online nurseries, and arrive fully dormant and looking as if they would never live. But they do. I agree with Olpea that your tree has some version of bacterial disease, which causes exactly the symptoms that you describe. A young tree infected with this disease has no future, and if it lives over the winter will likely look much worse next summer than it does now. Eventually, it will die, but it may take a year or two more. There is just no point in keeping a dying tree, and there is no cure or other remedy for this type of disease once it is established. I think borers in a very young tree like this are most unlikely. Don't get too wrapped up in the concept of a birth tree. Trees are living organisms over which none of us have full control, and peach trees are a poor choice for a tree you want to live a long time. They need very specific care in most locations, such as dormant spraying with copper, and even with the best of care and pruning seldom live more than 20 years -- and that is assuming you start with a healthy tree. So about the time your little lad can operate a saw, you would be sending him out in the yard to cut it down anyway. I'm not as optimistic as Scape because I do think it is time to throw in the towel on this tree, but I agree with him that you should not become discouraged. All of us have stories like this to tell. I also don't want to talk you out of planting a good peach tree, since you should be able to grow some peaches in Texas when you learn a little more about their care. There is a very good nursery at DeLeon TX, Womack Nursery, which sells a good list of peach varieties suited to your region. They probably sell bare root trees in fall as well as spring, and you might be able to plant a replacement tree or even two this fall if you give them a call. Just don't call them birth trees. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA
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there is a fruit forum ... never saw the hardcore there.. in this forum .. and spraying fruit trees is outside our expertise ... it has transplant shock ... so its sacrificing a few leaves .. so what ... NEVER amend a planting hole ... you didnt dig a very wide hole .... does that mean the hole you dug was barely as big as the pot..??? .. and you just shoved the potting media into the clay ... it has fruit.. and you just planted it this march??? .. usually takes my fruit trees a few years to fruit... but you bought bigger than i usually do ... sorry but one leaf is not sufficient for a disease diagnosis ... relax ... and do double check with the fruit peeps ... ken ps: 6 stakes.. eh???
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theaceofspades
15 years ago
Jellyman,
Belle of Georgia is listed as a resistant(R) variety to bacterial spot with the U. of West Virginia.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bacterial spot resistance of Peach
jellyman
15 years ago
Ace:

Belle of Georgia was the first peach variety I ever planted, in 1978. By the 5th year it was already showing signs of bacterial spot, characterized by yellowing and premature fall of the leaves and black spots on the fruit. By the 10th year the disease had progressed to canker that was causing substantial dieback, and I took the tree out. Belle of Georgia might be resistant to bacterial disease in West Virginia, but it was not in East Virginia. I am quite sure the source of my tree was Stark Brothers, which was my main supplier in those days.

Other varieties I have since lost to bacterial disease include Jerseyglow, Hale Haven, Bellaire, Starking Delicious, Madison, and Sweethaven. Of the 5 varieties I am currently growing, only a white peach called Sugar Giant shows those black spots on the fruit from time to time, though the tree so far is not affected.

Granted, I am doing a better job of caring for the trees now, and I credit their health at least partially to dormant copper sprays, which I am pretty sure help to hold bacterial disease at bay. But Belle of Georgia also suffered from a high incidence of brown rot at ripening time, and we rarely picked a decent ripe peach from the tree. It is not a variety I would plant again here.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA
Scott F Smith
15 years ago
I would concur with Ace on this - Georgia Belle is relatively good of my 30 peach varieties for bacterial spot. I have yet to get to the brown rot phase however since the squirrels have been swiping all the fruits before that. It is also a very productive tree.

Speaking of bacterial spot, this has been a bad year for me with all this rain. I did both late fall and early spring dormant copper and am still having a bad outbreak on several trees. My Flavor King pluot has every leaf completely shot-holed and many have fallen off. Too bad it happened this year, it is completely loaded with fruit for the first time.

Scott
theaceofspades
15 years ago
scott,
Georgia Belle is an old time cultivar originated from seedling of a Chinese peach. As with diseases, my one year old Flavor King has shot hole also but not bad. Still, it is the only tree in my orchard like that. The spray treatment for active bacteria spot is the same for fireblight. Copper and antibiotics. Have you bagged the Flavor King plums yet? The bacteria originates from the tree onto the fruit.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bacterial spot
sparcel
Original Author
15 years ago
To answer some of the initial questions -

1) I live in the Central Ohio area (Columbus) outside of the city in what is mostly farm land. There have only been a few nights that got down to the low to mid 40s since the tree was planted. Most nights have been in the 50s to 60s. The daytime temps have been very warm with some very sunny days.

2) The tree was purchased as a container tree that was very well 'leafed out' as you mentioned.

I am crossing my fingers and hoping the issue is sunburn that was mentioned as the problem has not appeard to worsen in the last week.
Scott F Smith
15 years ago
Ace, I have never found the fruit infection to be anything but cosmetic, so I don't worry about that; my major worry is the overall tree health. Copper is phytotoxic but I have been spraying it in small quantities, 1/4 tsp/gal to knock the disease back a bit. My primary control has been dormant copper which most years works very well, just not this year. I will hit it hard in the late fall with the dormant sprays and hope that next May is not another record rainfall.

Scott

Peach Tree Disease(?) Help

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