Growing Appetite

by Author

Boe

Brenda

Les

Valria

So I got back from vacation yesterday and soon after unloading the dog and the truck I was in the garden to see what a week away looked like.
Pulling into the driveway I got to see the tulips all in bloom and beautiful. I had taken a picture on my way out of town just in case I missed them completely but the weather must have been cool while I was away. When I went out to the vegetable garden I was excited to see the peas reaching for the twine, my potatoes breaking ground (not the potato project ones but the over-wintered ones). Also the raspberries so full of leaves and the blueberries brimming will little white blossoms that will all be fruit. But I was bummed to see all of the leaves on the nectarine and peach tree to be curled, red and black blotched bumpy leaves. I took a picture on the 26th of March and thought I wouldn’t have to deal with this problem this year, everything looked good, I wasn’t loosing buds, as you can see there are lots of blossoms. The leaves were green and soft and I was quite excited about the yields I would have this summer. I returned to every leaf curled with Peach Leaf Curl. Big Bummer.

So Peach Leaf Curl is a fungus called Taphrina deformans, it lives on the bark over a mild winter, it is easy to treat but can only be treated before the tree buds in the spring or in the fall after most of the leaves have fallen. I ended up treating them last spring, but it wasn’t soon enough and so was going to do it in the fall, well that didn’t happen. I was hoping since the winter was so harsh (really! I lost several perennial herbs that I have had for years) that it wouldn’t have survived the winter. But it did. So this year I am not going to remove the curled leaves, they are still needed for photosynthesis and removing them didn’t work last year I am going to leave them on there until they fall. I did have lots of blossoms so the possibility of fruit is still there, it just may be blemished. I am also not going to thin the fruit if and when any does develop just to see what survives and ripens. One thing I am going to do is fertilize through the summer just to be sure its getting enough nutrients since the foliage is limited. The second picture is the one of the leaves this morning, it is easy to recognize if you have this. It doesn’t affect the plum tree only feet from the peach and nectarine trees, it really only affects these two fruits trees. So lets hope I get lots of plums!