How To Treat Leaf Curl On Your Nectarine Tree
Leaf curl (Taphrina deformans ) is that horrifying-looking disease your stone fruit get where the leaves curl up and dye and your yields are drastically impacted. Leaf curl predominately affects peaches and nectarines, but can also hit apricots and almonds.
Leaf curl in action – yuck.
We have a mixed orchard which includes some stone fruit – our nectarine tree is the only one with leaf curl…
Our winter orchard. For those of you who are interested, this particular row of trees has been pruned to a rough espalier “fan” shape to be more space efficient.
Where does it come from?
While it’ll start to show up in early spring it’s actually been living in your trees over winter, dormant – waiting for the seasonal rains to come and spread it into every little nook and cranny throughout the tree. Effective treatment must begin when an affected tree loses its leaves in late autumn or early winter.
So what do you do?
A number of things, but two of the most important ones are:
- Before the tree buds swell spray it with lime sulphar. The lime lodges around unopened buds providing a temporary rainproof seal. Warning the lime sulphar smells like rotten eggs.
- When the buds are swelling (opening) usually in late winter/early spring, spray it again with Copper oxyxchloride – this kills the fungal spores. If you’re a bit late to the spraying party and your tree’s buds are already swelling (so can’t do the lime spray), go straight to the copper spray – it’ll still worthwhile.
Be sure to spray on a still day (wind gets a bit chaotic and messy) and that it’s not about to rain (it’ll wash it away).
Both treatments mentioned above can be sourced from your local nursery – they’ll provide details on quantities to use.
Importantly, once leaf-tips appear, it’s too late to do the above treatments – timing is everything! I literally put these treatments in my diary a year in advance so I don’t forget – I recommend you do the same :-).
Lime sulphar mix ready to go
Make sure you drench the trees with the spray to ensure it gets into all those nooks and crannies.
Other things you can do as well
For the best results in controlling leaf curl, use a number of control methods together. Complete elimination can be challenging, but the impact on the tree and fruit production can be minimised.
- Clean up any fallen leaves from previous infections and dispose of in the bin to minimise hiding places for the fungus spore.
- If a tree is already infected, remove all distorted leaves and fruit and destroy (bin or burn them).
- Feed your soil with slow release organic fertilisers and soil conditioners, as well as regular watering regimes, to ensure it is healthy and can recover from infection.
A healthy tree = more fruit
If you don’t treat your trees than your yields will go way down and the fruit you do get will be small and deformed – and it’s likely you’ll cry. While the year of 2020 is throwing a hole lot of shite at us – lets not add leaf curl to the list. So if you’re privileged enough to have a fruit trees – have a crack at maximising what you can get from them. Cause the more you have, the more you can share with your community :-).
26 Responses to “How To Treat Leaf Curl On Your Nectarine Tree”
I just planted stone fruit bare rooted trees, should I do this treatment before their first leaves or wait and see if they have leaf curl?
Wait and see if they actually have it Lauren 🙂
I was just out looking at my tree and it has curl leaf, blossoms have already bloomed so appears to late to do the treatment course you recommended. I’ll pop it in the diary for next winter though. And I’ll go and remove all the affected leaves!
Thanks for this advice
Cassie
No worries – all the best with it next season 🙂
Awesome read. Thanks!!!! Do you have any blog posts on anthracnose? We have a mango tree that we’re considering chopping down because anthracnose just keeps coming back. Would love to save it though.
Sorry Amy – I’m not familiar with anthracnose – ask your local nursery for help 🙂
When I look up Copper oxychloride, while considered “organic” it states it is harmful to humans and insects. My peach tree suffers each year with leaf curl and I have an organic permaculture garden, so am not sure is this product would be suitable and why you are recommending it. I don’t want to use any product harmful to the insects and biodiversity in my fruit and vegie growing.
Goos point Sue, Copper does accumulate, so you don’t want to be using it often. I’ve comfortable with using it once a year. Another thing to do is lay down cardboard around base of the tree to capture excess that drops to the ground so it doesn’t get into the soil. I’m sharing my methods as this (and good soil health) has been the most successful approach so far. always open to learning more though!
Great article have just sprayed my nectarines and this year hope I am early enough!, also sprayed my apricot just in case!
Great Kerrie 🙂
Interesting — lime sulphur and copper oxychloride. I’ve always used something similar, to good effect — Bordeaux (lime + copper sulphate). Any idea whether it’s worse for the environment than the treatment you’re using?
I find that I can spray in late winter, as long as the buds haven’t started swelling yet, and it’s just as effective as spraying in fall. I save a bit of time/material too, cuz I can wait until winter pruning is done and not have quite so many branches to spray! I typically get only a couple handfuls of infected leaves per 2.5m diameter tree.
Pretty much the same thing Paul. so not better/worse at all. I also only spray in late winter with good results 🙂
I have recently purchased a nectarine tree from my nursery, so I’m unsure if it has leaf curl. Would recommend doing this as precautionary step? Or only do this if the tree is know to have leaf curl? Thank you!
Hi Dani, just do it if you see signs of it coming 🙂
Thank you for providing this article, it gives me more details on options to use, as I have used Bordeaux spray up to now, utilising the sulphur will add another dimension / tool for attack!
One small detail – it is Copper Oxychloride. 😉
Typo fixed – thanks 🙂
Hi there,
I have just checked my small trees that I bought in winter and are just budding leaves now.
Some new leaves have signs of leaf curl. From the article above it would seem it is not worth spraying until next winter. Do I just work on removing affected leaves for now? I’m looking after them as per the article regarding soil condition & fertilising etc…
Thanks
Helene
That’s right Helene 🙂
I bought a miniture double grafted peach/nectarine . Very healthy look tree when I bought it . Leaves have just opened. Sadly tree is full of leaf curl. Obviously to late to spray. So what course of action should I use . Thanks in advance Jenny
You can manually remove all/most of the infected leaves and burn or bin them. Add some compost around the base to nourish it and then next season get ready to spray.
My peach tree is already affected badly with leaf curl and it is mid September so too late to do any winter treatments. The whole tree is affected. What can I do to help the tree it is not due to lack of water and it has been munched with pea straw
You can manually remove all/most of the infected leaves and burn or bin them. Add some compost around the base to nourish it and then next season get ready to spray. 🙂
My tree is showing signs of leaf curl so I have removed the damaged leaves. Do I need to remove All of the fruit or only those that look deformed. Thanks
Hi Anne – no need to remove the fruit, it just impacts the leaf. Although your fruit harvest will be lower until the tree’s healthy.
Hi Hannah, firstly, I love love love your website! Our peaches and nectarine have struggled along with leaf curl for several years, some years not too bad, other years it has devastated the trees (and fruit). We’ve tried lime sulphur and copper oxychloride (using one or the other but not both) and bordeaux with several applications in autumn, winter and spring but it persisted. This year I followed your regime and tada! So far, so good! Have also mulched heavily with stable manure and chipped bark. No leaf curl tears this year, but now they are covered in black aphids instead… taking to them today with eco oil & castile soap, hopefully that will sort those guys out. (waited a couple of weeks for the ladybirds but they didn’t arrive) – Thank you! Caroline
Glad we were able to help- hope those aphids clear off! 🙂