I use Sevin for protection I hope I am doing alright. I am not expert I am learning.

Foolish, Sevin's an insecticide, and probably not the best for your purposes. Pyrethroids are the most used by forum members and one available at the big boxes is Once and Done.

Monterey Fungus Fighter is probably the best you can do fighting brown rot that's packaged for the back yard grower although you may have to order on-line. I know it as Orbit.

Here's the label for Monterey Fungus fighter.
http://www.montereylawngarden.com/pdf/monterey_fungi_fighter_100501.pdf

Please note that it's for ornamental plants. Further, the label also has a warning "don't use on crab apples for food."

Here is a link that might be useful: Fungus Fighter is for ornamentals, not edibles

jean001a,

I loooked at your link. It does have Monterey Fungus Fighter used for fruits and specifically Brown Rot. Look at the last page of what you linked.

I use Lime-Sulfur and Copper on my peach trees.

I do too but its not very helpful on brown rot. I have found using a combination of Serenade, sulphur or lime-sulphur, and Saf-T-Side oil to be about the best I can do organically on brown rot and I have had to eliminate the most susceptible varieties from my orchard as well. In a California study of organic treatments for brown rot, Saf-T-Side oil proved to be by far the best treatment, and that is my primary brown rot control, often with Serenade thrown in. Since oil and sulphur can't be tank mixed and 14 days separation is needed between sprays of one and the other I don't use much sulphur on brown rot.

Scott

Kngskid. Give me more info on lime sulfer and copper. P M me if you like and I`ll give you my pnone no. thanks Bill

Harvestman, tell us more about ONCE AND DONE. Sounds like it might be the ticket. Bill

br33, as I mentioned above, every study plus my own experience shows it doesn't work very well.

kngskid, I'd be interested in how many years you have been using it and when you are spraying. I thought I was doing great for five years, but thats about the amount of time it takes brown rot to really get established. Then brown rot wiped me out.

Scott

I planted two peach trees in December 2007. I learned of brown rot in 2008 after we didn't get any of the few peaches we had and in 2009 the trees had a bad case of Bacterial Spot. So, I began spraying in November of 2009.

I start spraying the trees with Copper when most of the leaves have fallen in November. My application is 3tsp Copper in a one gallon sprayer (filled with water) once in November, once in December, once in Feb. In March I do two sprays of Lime-Sulfur with 14 days between each application of 4tsp Lime-Sulfur to one gallon water.

After the rest of the flower falls away and only the fruit is visible I spray with wettable Sulfur before or after a rain.

In 2010 there was one leaf with bacterial spot long after we had eaten the peaches and no brown rot at all.

kngskid, I also found copper works well on bacterial spot, I got rid of a horrible outbreak that way.

The problem with brown rot is it seems to slowly creep in and after about five years it often gets a major foothold that is hard to shake. I have heard several such stories besides my own. Maybe you will do better, but you are not at the five-year threshold yet. I thought I was doing great with my couple of sulphur sprays I was doing, then I got whammed in year five. Sulphur is still very helpful at about nickel-sized fruits, all it takes is one good spray and you can eliminate most peach scab problems. If you are still brown rot free 2-3 years from now, then I will be impressed and will start using more spring sulphur.

Scott

Scott's right, as far as my experience goes, which includes trying to assure crops at scores of sites in the southeastern NY area over the last couple of decades.

What I could add is that, in my region at least, there's more at play than just the age of the plants or cultural practices like keeping the trees open, or the weather of any given season. Sites vary a great deal as far as levels of brown rot pressure for reasons I can't always figure. If one approach succeeds at one site it's no guarantee it will at another- even if it's just a few miles away.

Once and Done is a pyrethroid that's relatively mammal safe. Use of such chemicals is discouraged by Cornell because they don't discriminate between good and bad bugs and keep important beneficials from sprayed trees. They seem to work OK in small plantings from what I've read on this forum, however. No ones reported of mite or scale outbreaks as a result of their use here.

This is the first time I am growing peaches and my trees were fine until recently. Not the leaves are starting to drop...what can I do about it?

I hope there is a solution!

ALL advice welcome! Please comment under my pix so I will get a handy dandy email to alert me of messages.

Thank you

Here is a link that might be useful: Check out my peaches - please help! Is this brown rot? Or Bateria Spot?

I am using now Captan and it works good.
Abe

Alternating Immunox and Captan.

Apartmentfarmer, your peach has bacterial spot. I use copper at leaf drop and just before leaf out to control it. There is not so much you can do during the growing season for it, it will grow new leaves (and look really odd because some of the limb will be bare). I would pull off nearly all of the fruits to limit the stress on the tree.

By the way on the topic of the previous discussion of this thread, I should have stated that I never sprayed as much sulphur as you are doing, kngskid. Before and after every rain is a lot of sprays. You may be able to permanently control brown rot that way. I probably average one organic disease spray every other week on my peaches through May (through curc season since I tank mix the disease spray to my Surround), and then maybe once every 3-4 weeks after that (tank mixed with spinosad or Bt sprays).

Scott

Thanks for advice. I was hoping it wasn't bacterial spot. I removed some of the smaller fruit. Sad day!

Here is a link that might be useful: My little removed unripe peaches...what can I do with them?

Apartmentfarmer,

Since you're peach is potted, you can avoid bacterial and fungal infections in the future by bringing the tree inside during rainy weather or nights with heavy dews.

One other thing. I'm not totally convinced you have bacterial or fungal issues.

It doesn't totally look like Bac. spot to me, but sometimes these leaf issues are difficult to diagnose, so it could be.

I have no experience with potted peaches, but sometimes too much water can cause leaf issues similar to yours in other plants.

Either way it was a good idea to remove the fruit on a tree that stressed.

Thanks Olpea - I wish I had somewhere to bring the peaches indoors in the evening - Coastal San Diego has very moist dewy mornings especially during May and June (We call it May gray and June gloom!). So it is probably an unsustainable effort to move them every night.

Perhaps it is over watering or other external factors? I recently put some worm castings in the pots. It appears that my last peach blog entry, April 18th, the leaves were very lush and green, now a week later, the leaves are brown speckled and dropping like crazy!

This is the first time I've ever grown fruit trees so I am learning along the way. Thanks for your responses :)

Here is a link that might be useful: A week before leaves dropping and brown speckling.

Note that next year your tree will probably do fine if you get the copper sprays in - young recently transplanted trees are much more susceptible. I'm fairly certain you have a shot-hole disease, and it is likely bacterial spot but could also be coryneum blight which looks similar. Both are controlled with the copper.

Scott

If you are spraying fruit you plan to eat, is copper ok to ingest? Just worries me to spray any form of poison or other chemical near fruit trees. I have read about using milk mixed with water and dish detergent, apparently very effective, cheap and safe. A quick google search will show you several people who swear by it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Can milk control brown rot?

Copper is only sprayed early in the season, it will all be gone several months later.

I have heard many claims about milk and dish detergent, but the only proven results I have seen is milk will help a bit against powdery mildew and soap works against aphids etc. If you think it will work against brown rot try it yourself and let us know. In my experience the best way to deal with brown rot without spraying any chemicals is to grow varieties resistant to it, and to remove all infected fruits as soon as possible.

Scott

Jardner, maybe you should explore your high anxiety about ag chemicals. We live in a world where intimate contact with synthetic materials is virtually inevitable. The residue on conventionally grown produce represents a tiny fraction of our over all exposure.

Try googling for some info on epidemilogical studies comparing farmers and their health to the population on the whole. I found one of 70,000 farmers over 7 years. The results showed them to have 30% less cancer, significantly longer life spans and better over all health than the general population.

These were farmers in S.C and Fl- not states with very stringent pesticide regulations. Many of these folks spend the entire growing season bathing in pesticides while pulling mist blowers behind open tractors or at least did for extended periods of their lives.

The studies that make you worry about pesticides are generally from laboratories on rats regarding individual types of cancer.

You should be much more worried every time you get in your car- even your exposure to synthetics is probably significantly higher there in the closed cab, but of course, the real risk in in physical injury.