Peach leaf curl

Design Bod

Bought a Peach and a Nectarine tree last year. Didn't expect to get any fruit but thought they might at least have some nice blossom and grow into hardy trees. Year 2 and they've both developed the dreaded Leaf Curl as soon as the blossom came along. I've since discovered that we should have sprayed them with a copper like solution before they blossomed to avoid this. I just hate using sprays, especially on anything that has even a slim chance of bearing fruit. Hence, I didn't and this is what's happened. I've pinched all the leaves off and the trees are looking quite bare and sad. Presumably if any more leaves did try and shoot they'd immediately curl. Is there anything we can do at this stage or do we just have to live with bare trees all year and then have to spray something toxic on them early next Spring (which is still rather avoid doing) ...? Any thoughts appreciated. 

purplerallim

Unfortunately my peach never really thrived as it had this from the start (very annoyed a GC would sell a sick plant) but I didn't know about this ailment till later like you. I tried for three years but it never cleared, I would pinch out the affected leaves spray and the next set would be ok, then it would come back. In the end got rid of it and planted a maple. Sorry it's such a bad outcome.

Design Bod

Thanks @purplerallim, that doesn't sound good though. It'll be a shame if they're both lost causes

Dovefromabove

I don't grow these, but I seem to remember something about protecting them from rain over the winter to avoid the problem ............................... here it is, found it https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=232

Hope that helps

BobTheGardener

You need to keep rain off of the young leaves, which is where peach leaf curl comes from.  For many folk, this means growing them in a pot under glass in spring and moving outside in summer.  There is a resistant variety called 'Avalon Pride' and I grow this outside in the ground.  It gets a bit of curl, but on no more than about 10% of the leaves, so I only remove those if I can reach (it's about 15-20ft tall now.)  This from 3-4 years ago:

Guernsey Donkey2

We had an almond tree, had almonds on in year 2, in year 3 it got peach leaf curl and was advised to remove all affect leaves and burn which we did, but in year 4 the tree died. Very disappointed, it wasn't a cheap tree.  The tree was growing outside.

Christopher Garrod

Take off all the affected leaves. The plant needs new leaves to survive. So souse it in about 10 Gallons of water with Growmore or other Nitrogen rich feed at the start of May. The plant will recover and happily flourish as though nothing had happened. 

Design Bod

Thank you all, it's going to be tricky protecting them from rain going forwards (as they're in an orchard and not against a wall), but I'll certainly take the advice to douse them in feed and see if we can get them back. Thanks All

Jason milly

Very true I started my plum tree of this year and have kept it in the greenhouse till early summer as like mentioned above the rain is the cause, I did read if you are growing them near a wall or fence then you can build a canopy but I thought better to keep them in the greenhouse. 

Gartener

This disease is the reason why i gave up on growing peaches. Tried spraying with the fungicide etc but not much affect. Apparently there are certain verities of peach that are resistant to the leaf curl but i never.
Anyways, I concluded that there are better trees out there worthy of a spot in the garden (for e.g Plum). Good luck 

Design Bod

Christopher Garrod said:

Take off all the affected leaves. The plant needs new leaves to survive. So souse it in about 10 Gallons of water with Growmore or other Nitrogen rich feed at the start of May. The plant will recover and happily flourish as though nothing had happened. 

Hi Christopher, have only just got to adding the Growmore feed as have been away. The new leaves continue to grow out mostly curly. I’m hoping that the feed will help it recover, as you say.

Would you advise continuing to feed on a fortnightly basis? Fingers crossed it’ll recover and the leaves will start to grow healthily 🙄