What I meant to say in the original post is that action of the water splashing on the tree as it was being sprayed cased the the spores to spread by spashing them all over with the water.

jjtbay: The pictured leaves don't have peach leaf curl. And leaf curl is not a disease that would occur on one branch but not another. It is not from the spraying you did. There would ordinarily be a few leaves look like this in the most shaded portion of the canopy, but not a third or more. Could also be a nitrogen deficiency but most likely it is root or trunk damage due to weather, rot, etc. Probably not much you can do. One dry month shouldn't be a problem. Most likely the tree is just getting old and suffering various damage. Peach trees don't live very long in most of the northern midwest.

The Fruitnut

jitbay:

There is nothing wrong with spraying your tree, but the spray you use and the timing must be effective. You might as well spit on your tree as spray it with that "Soap Shield" from Gardens Alive!, since the metallic copper component is so weak.

Your tree most likely has a bacterial infection, and the only chance it has is spray it at least twice during the dormant season, beginning after leaf fall, with a copper compound that has some real punch. Kocide is one such product; there are others. Looks like you may have some shothole fungus there too. Copper would take care of that as well.

Your tree should not be checking out at 10 years. I have a 15 year old Golden Jubilee out there that is healthy as horse, and full of fat peaches. Before I figured out how to head off these diseases with dormant spraying, I lost over a half-dozen peach trees. My climate is particularly bad for them.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Thank you for you comments. The tree is starting to look sad now. All the yellow leaves have fallen off and now the green ones are starting to go to. It looks like the pattern is that the oldest leaves, the ones that were at the base of the new shoot growth, are gone. So the only leaves left are the newest ones that are near the end of the new shoot growth. But it seem like these newer leaves are getting this plague now.

Would it make sense to knock all the developing fruit off so the tree can devote all it's energy to survival instead of fruit production ?

Is there really nothing that can be done at this point to stop the remaining leaves from falling off ?

If it survives then I'll have to really go nuts with the dormant sprays for next year because whatever it has it's a severe case.

Thank you.

Joe

Joe,

I'm most definitely not an expert. But, I've had some trouble with Peach Leaf Curl (which you don't have) and some issues with the leaves suddenly and rapidly falling off of my young nectarine tree. A few weeks ago, I thought for sure that my nectarine would lose all of its leaves.

Both of these trees seem to be thriving after I applied some compost around the base of the tree (inside the dripline). My novice recommendation is compost and, perhaps, an application of Bonide's fruit tree spray. I used this for my pest issues. I've also thinned many of the peaches from branches that had considerable peach leaf curl.

...just my two cents. Good luck!
Mika