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Article: Preventing the peach tree's nemesis.
- Article from:
- Sunset
- Article date:
- February 1, 1984
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1984 Sunset Publishing Corp. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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If new leaves of peach or nectarine emerge puckered and brittle, chances are the tree has peach leaf curl. Once symptoms appear, it's too late to do anything about it this year. But you can prevent the disease for this season if you use the right spray just before leaf buds break open in winter or early spring.
Peach leaf curl is caused by a fungus (Taphrina deformans); rainwater-spread spores enter and infect leaf buds as the bud scales separate and expose the leaf tips. Leaves thicken, pucker, redden, then turn black and drop off in midsummer. In severe cases, the tree dies at this point. But most infected trees produce a second crop of healthy leaves from ...