Leaf curl in stonefruit
Hi
I bought my house on 700m2 in summer and moved in late Autumn. I have an established garden around the perimeter of the block and one of the back corners has 3 stonefruit trees. There is another tree a few bushes along. I don’t know what they are, but an arborist acquaintance told me they were mostly peach/nectarine, and a cherry/apricot. (At this point it’s obviously not a cherry, so one should be an apricot.)
I’ve never been fortunate enough to live in a garden with established fruit trees, and these are established. They are easily 4-5m high and wide.
Unfortunately I discovered my main largest tree had dodgy leaves and the fruit wasn’t looking good, and I’ve determined I have an entire tree covered in leaf curl (fungus) and it has spread to at least two of the others. (The 4th is very hard to get at.) see attached pictures.
The advice I’ve read about with leaf curl is to spray prior to leaf budding and boy has that horse bolted. (Of course I had no idea of the problem at that point in August.)
I didn’t prune in Autumn because I read pruning needs to be done after fruiting in dry weather to ensure the cuts cure.
So my question to the subreddit (apart from a large, almighty HELP) is: should I just prune the whole tree now, removing all of the infected leaves, therefore reducing the tree to bare branches, or wait until all the fruiting has stopped and then tackle it?
Also, can they survive a hard prune like roses can? (Yes, very different plants, but the roses I also inherited as doing marvellously now.)
Location: cool temperate, Gippsland VIC.
submitted by /u/licoriceallsort
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