Stress; could be from too many fruit, lack of water, disease pressure, too young to hold

Certainly wouldn't be lack of water. We've had a wet spring here. Last year this tree produced quite a few, so I don't think the too young reason would hold up. The tree looks otherwise healthy. Any other thoughts?

A few things. When there is a lot of water like raining day after day, peach can drop green, healthy leaves. Not sure if it would drop fruit.

Have you cut open the fruit? If so any tunnels, sign of worms or worm inside? Of so, that's the cause.

have you fertilize it witn nitrogen fertilizer recently? Too much N could cause some fruit trees to drop their fruit. Persimmon is known for that.

The trees are in the lawn which gets seasonal fertilizer. They were dropping before the last "weed-n-feed" was applied, but possibly dropped more after.

I just collected what has fallen in the last day or so. Cut some open.

Im not sure how growers are able to stay on top of the worms. Last year less than half of the mature fruit were free of worms. Advice?

What are you spraying for the "worm " control? Just wondering as it does not seem to be very effective. If plum curculio, they are tough to control. Some insecticides do a better job on curculios than others.

For ordinary backyard growers, try spraying insecticide called Triazicide by Spectracide. Look at the label to make sure it's for fruit trees.

To make sure your spray stay on longer, buy a bottle of sticker/spreader called Bonide Turbo. You can mix this sticker in a spray tank with the insecticide.

Follow the label re. the amount of insecticide per gallon of water and how often in a season you can spray. With sticker, you may only need to spray once every 10-14 days if there is no rain storm.

Usually 2-4 sprays per growing season should do the trick. The timing of spraying is the most important. By now, many of your fruit may have worms tunneling in. Pick off all the fruit that you see holes or oozes on their skin. Once the worms are in the fruit, the fruit won't mature, they will drop sooner or later. Leave the good ones on the tree and spray with insecticide.

It's close to impossible to grow peaches without spray. You can do low spray if you use Clemson peach paper bags. You can look it up but it's time consuming/tedious to put those bags on.

I've used "Fruit Tree Spray" by Bonide for most of the sprays this year (and in past years). From the label: A complete liquid fruit tree spray containing Captan 12%, Malathion 6%, Carbaryl 0.3% and a spreader sticker. I also spray at times with a mineral oil/soap product...trying to be more "natural". I would be thrilled if I could find a product that does a better job. I feel that I work hard at achieving nice fruit, but it seems like an unattainable goal. I know it HAS to be possible. There are so few peaches left on the trees I'm torn. 1) why bother? but 2) I LOVE peaches and can't imagine not having any in a year that a late frost didn't (quite) kill the infant peaches.

The problem with " complete fruit tree spray" is the dosages of both pesticide and fungicide are not strong enough. It is convenient but not as effective as spraying fungicide or pesticide at full strength (they can be combined at full strength plus sticker).

So, what is the recommended fungicide? Is the pesticide mentioned by @eastmeetwest the right one in your experience?

I used bags last year, and it worked perfectly. I did no spraying of any kind, and the tree was covered with more bugs than I've ever seen on a tree all season. Only ants could get in the bags, but they didn't touch the peaches.

itsmce:

Your fruit tree spray concentrate uses Malathion for the major insecticide plus Sevin. Malathion is great as short residual (half life of 4 days) which is nice for many uses. However it does not do a great job on curculio. It is tough to find a really good insecticide for curculio for the home grower. I have had great success with a product called Ortho Flower, Fruit and Vegetable Insect Killer. This product has the active ingredient Acetamiprid. It has worked fine on my apples which also get damaged by curculio. You may want to try that. It can be hard to find but I bought my last bottle from Amazon. This product is also registered for use on peaches and many other fruits.

I have heard good things about Triazicide too but have no experience with it. Good luck on the remaining peaches!

The nice guy, no disrespect to you but what kind of bugs do you have there? As far as I have expeprienced, Oriental Fruit Moths and plum curculios can attack peaches or other fruit as small as a pinkie size.

This means that I cannot put a bag on such a small size of fruitlet. I need to spray insecticide to cover the fruit until they size up to about a thumb size. Even Clemson University who introduces peach paper bags here in the US, suggests to spray at least one to two cover spray before bags can be used.

Triazicide works. However, there was discussion that it seemed to have a shelf life. It does not store well esp. in the heat of the summer. some say after two years, its effectiveness goes down.. Unfortunately, you cannot tell how old the product is because it has on expiration date on it.

Lol, I am in the Orient, so you can imagine what a problem OFM is. And don't get me started on Japanese beetles. The neighbors Peachtree's get zero edible fruit because she neither bags nor sprays. I believe most of the commercial operations both bag and spray, among other things.

I waited until they were about pinky size, and then thinned and bagged at the same time. Any fruit that was less than perfect I thinned it out. Some of the fruit was already bug damaged at that time. I did nothing for two months and opened the bags expecting a horror show, and instead the fruit were all perfect.

I'm a beginner and it was such a screaming success for me, I imagine someone with experience could do even better.

I've done exactly the same this year, except I've got more than double the fruit.

The OP said they needed help