Alison: It's just as well you missed your spraying with Bonide dormant oil, since that would be of no value in controlling peach leaf curl. The best recipe for curl is a strong dormant copper spray, best applied once in late fall and again just before bud break on the trees. There are several liquid copper sprays out there, including one by Bonide, that are quite low in fixed copper equivalent and are only marginally effective. Then there is the "soap spray" containing some copper, sold by the likes of Gardens Alive! This product is useless. The best copper product that I know of is Kocide, which I use as do many others on this forum. Kocide may be difficult to find in small quantities, but keep looking around the net until you find it if you are serious about controlling the curl on your peaches. As for the peaches that fall off at golf ball size, they may have an insect problem such as oriental fruit moth, which leaves a little drip of pectin on the surface of the developing fruits. Peaches visited by OFM usually fall off well before achieving full size. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Audrey: Once curl is underway, the affected leaves cannot be saved, and the disease must run its course. As far as I have been able to determine, neem oil is useless except for its fragrant perfume, and if it's the copper soap fungicide from Gardens Alive! that is worse than useless. Peach leaf curl is a disease that must be prevented by eradicating the overwintering spores from the tree, and that is done with a strong copper spray like Kocide with a high percentage of fixed copper. Copper soap, which is around 2 percent fixed copper, will not cut the mustard even as a dormant spray. Peach leaf curl is a serious disease and requires serious medicine. Curl normally dies out as warm weather arrives. It prospers best in the cool, rainy weather of early spring, so hope for warm, dry weather. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

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

I was looking at some sites doing grafted, and it just turned me off. Not sure why, since I'm no pro. I'm new, so I bought some rooted plants non grafted from both Brads Buds and Blooms (via mail) and others from Exotic Plumeria nursery in Tampa which I visited in person. Pretty happy with both so far. These are Central Florida locations. The rooted mailed plants came free of soil in wet newspaper, now in the teal and black containers. (came yesterday).