give it a chance. My two in my backyard are beginning to drop their leaves after all the fruit has been picked. You could try a copper fungicide just to make sure it is not a fungus doing it in but I'll bet you'll find the leaf dropping a natural yearly event.

thank you. I have been worried since I just had the tree planted from a nursery in April and it started looking wilted about 3 weeks after planting, then just got worse. I thought the shock might have killed it plus all the rain. I will look more into a copper fungicide.

it's worth waiting and seeing, but my guess is that it's doa. fruit trees really should be planted in the cool, dry season--even though they don't put on growth at the top, they put out roots which, when spring arrives, come in handy. i've always planted fruit trees during the beginning of january, the coldest month. finally, if your tree is in fact dead, make sure to order from a reputable nursery. MAYBE the place you bought from grafts their trees onto appropriate stock, but PROBABLY it didn't. "bay laurel" and "just fruits and exotics" are two reputable places to get your trees. i've also ordered from willis. eh. not great, not bad. good selection.

annettem---If you want to know if your tree is alive, take your fingernail and lightly scratch the branches (or trunk if no branches are alive) to see if the green layer (cambium) is still green.

Christine

I agree, April in Florida is the wrong time to plant Peach trees. They do best if planted bare-root in winter, while dormant.

Scrape the trunk in a thin strip with your fingernail. Try several layers, shallow, medium and deep. If it all looks brown, start cutting the tree down from the top, in sections. If the inner layers are white/brown/tan/black with no green, that area is dead.

If you find any green, stop cutting. I chopped several of my Peaches back from 7' to 2' since I was not happy with the form and health of the trees. They are recovering and should be much better.

But, dead is dead. If you get no green when scraping or pruning, all the way down to the graft, your tree is a goner.

Try again this winter, with a stout, healthy tree from Bay Laurel or Just Fruits.

Good Luck!

Lisa

I bought peach and nectarine trees in June in Florida. They lost all their leaves when I planted them. (It was a tropic beauty, florida king, and a sunraycer) I thought they were dead, and then they all blossomed in August and regrew their leaves. I have a sundollar that lost all of its leaves when planted in September, has green buds but has done absolutely nothing for a month now, so im worried about that one.

I think the low chill varieties go dormant from stress.

Are buds present? The future of the plant is in the buds. If buds are well formed, hard and full of bright green tissue inside-you will have to sacrifice one to make that determination-the plant will very likely green out normally next spring. If the buds are dried out and flake away easily, it's toast. BTW, some of your description sounds like symptoms of fire blight, a bacterial disease that can effect many fruit tree types. The ends of twigs or branches develop what's know as a "shepard's crook", hooked end. Initially, they "burn" up and turn dark brown, depending on tree type. Being bacterial, all the fungicides in the world won't help if it is fire blight. But there are treatments available, basically antibiotics.

+oM