I have loads of peaches. Bu2t lots are falling off rotted, or in some state of rotting.

I pick peaches daily... but under ripe, and let them finish ripening in a bowl on the kitchen counter.

This is the third year of getting peaches from this little tree I bought in 2013 and planted it. First year two peaches, last year great crop but I wasn't home...

I have never sprayed mine, as I kind of like the idea of eating food without chemicals. Now, I wonder, if I should have sprayed.

I had some sporadic issues with more fruit drop than usual but my plant foliage stayed healthy overall and we had a really great harvest, but not the biggest harvest ever or anything even close to it. We've had 54" of rain so far, with most of that in May and June, and that is when the fruit drop was at its worst. On plum trees in particular, even when you thin a lot, a certain amount of fruit drop is inevitable---so much so that the phenomenon is commonly referred to as June drop, since in most parts of the country it happens in June. Here in southcentral OK, I tend to see the heavy fruit drop more in May than in June most years, especially in a year like this where the last freeze/frost was earlier, and the trees bloomed earlier than usual and set fruit earlier than usual. I believe there is a point where the tree is carrying more fruit than it can mature so it dumps the excess fruit on its own so that the rest of the fruit has the best chance of maturing well.

You almost always have to thin a lot of fruit off the trees, particularly stone fruit like peaches, plums and nectarines. I like to thin in stages because Mother Nature often comes along behind me (hail, exceptionally heavy rain, high winds, etc.) and thins more fruit. I try to get all the thinning done before the fruit are the size of a nickle. If you wait too long to thin, the fruit you leave behind on the tree won't have a long enough time to reach their maximum size before they ripen, so they won't benefit from the thinning as much as you'd hoped.

In a year when it seems like every single flower formed a fruit and the plums, in particular, look like bunches of small green grapes because there's so many of them, I tend to remove about 94-96% of the fruit that set. That sounds like a lot, and it is----depending on the size and age of your tree you will find yourself removing anywhere from several hundred to a couple thousand tiny fruit per tree----but the thinning is essential. If you leave too many fruit on the tree, they remain small and you have a lower flesh-to-pit ratio with the stone fruit. Proper thinning at the right time gives you a higher flesh-to-pit ratio. Even when you thin at the proper rate and the proper time, sometimes weather causes additional thinning, and there's nothing you can do to prevent that.

I grow early varieties that tend to finish up their production before July arrives and only have one very young tree (planted 2 years ago) left with fruit on it, and we'll be through harvesting from it in a couple of days. I have found that with early varieties I can harvest almost all the fruit for us, with the deer, squirrels and birds getting less of it because they don't realize it already is ripe. With the later varieties, the wildlife tends to take a disproportionate share.

The peaches and plums are finished up now, with the exception of that one young peach tree, the cherry (also very young) didn't produce much yet but I have high hopes for future years, and the fig trees are heavily loaded with fruit that is not close to maturing yet. The fig I overwintered in the greenhouse in a very large container has a lot of fruit, but the one that was growing in the ground in the back garden froze back very hard last fall when we had that early freeze and I didn't think it had survived. It finally began putting out foliage in June, but hasn't set any fruit yet.

I don't spray my fruit trees and get away with it, but am in a hotter and generally less humid part of the state. If I was in a more northern or eastern part of the state, I suspect I'd have to spray at least with a fungicide in order to prevent brown rot. I also don't have issues with plum curculios. If I did, I'd have to spray to prevent them too, or there would be no crop. I occasionally see something like brown rot or peach leaf curl on a tree, but not often---maybe once a decade. If you see it routinely, you probably should follow the OSU-recommended spray schedule in order to ensure you get a good harvest.

I think this year's weather has been really hard on fruit trees as they tend to get diseased leaves, which then causes them to drop the leaves. Normally, though, after the diseased leaves fall, new foliage comes out on the trees shortly thereafter. I do see some thinning out of the leaves on my plum trees now, which is fairly common here in late July or early August, but I generally don't worry about it because they leaf out again. It seems linked to rainfall in hot weather and probably is fungal-related. The peach tree foliage looks great and is much less prone to drop like the plum foliage.

Honestly, with all the rainfall we've had (our June rainfall was almost 400% of normal, and May was probably closer to 500% of normal) this year, it wouldn't have surprised me if every fruit tree we have had died. I am sort of astonished at how resilient the fruit trees have been in the face of incredible rainfall, but I do have all of them growing in well-drained sandy loam. I doubt they would have survived this amount of rainfall in the clay soil found on the majority of our property.

Moni that tree looks great this year.

My Second year peach gave us 7 and they were great. My pears were thinned by the wind so I did not have to this them this year.

Kim, The wind always does a lot of thinning for me, and often extremely hard rain does more thinning, and then hail does more. Some years it is little wonder there's not much fruit left to harvest. Luckily, this was one of those years when so much fruit set that there still was plenty left.

The two young peach trees that produced so well this year are only in their 3rd year in the ground, and they produced heavy yields even after heavy thinning.

The youngest tree, from which we'll harvest maybe a dozen or two fruit in the next few days, is only 2 years old.

My plum trees are well over a decade old and produced hundreds of fruit, after thinning, this year. Usually I'll get that kind of harvest from peaches only after they've been in the ground at least 4 years, so these 2 older trees are almost there. Of course, one late freeze can ruin everything.

Since I don't spray anything for borers, the peach trees usually only last 8-10 years, though the plums last a few years longer. That's the price I pay for raising the fruit spray-free, but I don't care. I'd still rather not eat fruit that's been sprayed.

Dawn