[Sandra]

Hi all,

after all the very sound advice I was able to spray my trees mid February and again mid March and so far the peaches, nectarines and apricot are looking great. I sprayed the peaches, nectarine and apricot trees twice. Plums were only sprayed once as they were in full flower by the time I returned in March and these are beginning to show signs of infection. However, the surrounding trees - cultivated and wild almonds (of which we have many and some are quite large) are in a terrible state. I even have a lemon tree growing close by that appears to be affected. What would the experts advise? Should I attempt to spray now although leaves are fully formed, if somewhat/extremely distorted and fruit is forming or do I just cross my fingers and wait for the leaves to fall in the autumn before spraying everything as thoroughly as I can. The product I was able to get locally is called ZIRAM granuflo 76 wg.

 

[David Bracey]

Take another look at your citrus.  It cannot be peach leaf curl. Do you have an attack of aphids? Do you want to spray your citrus or the other plants.  It is not clear; if you are referring to peach leaf curl it is useless to spray now.

Ziram is OK, it was popular when I started work in `63.  It has been superseded by products which are more fungitoxic and systemic.

[Alisdair]

Sandra, Your part of the Peloponnese was hit by two weeks of very high winds in the spring, which did quite a lot of damage. Citrus trees don't like wind - especially lemons - and it could be that the leaf damage was caused by that, unless the tree is well sheltered. But the new young growth should be looking very perky after the rains you've had.

[Sandra]

Thank you both for your replies.

The lemon tree in question was quite protected from the worst of the weather and is unfortunately playing host to the local population of what to me look like wooly aphids! Some of my other citrus trees were less well protected and as a consequence have far fewer leaves and interestingly, far fewer aphids have taken up residence - they probably got blown away! I should have looked more closely in the first place instead of just panicking that all my trees were succumbing to peach leaf curl! As for the other trees, it sounds like I must wait until next winter to spray and in the meantime keep my fingers crossed that the damage will not be too great. However, with all the rain we've had and are still having I guess it's going to be a bad year for this particular fungal infection. Do you know if there is anything more up to-date that is readily available in Greece for use as a spray?