The Peach Leaf Curl:
The Peach Leaf Curl is caused by one mushroom (taphrina deformans). Spread enough, she owes her name to the bumps which show the contaminated leaves.
- Symptoms: The Peach Leaf Curl appears on leaves, young shoots and sometimes fruits, which it corrupts in surface. The attained leaves change colour, and become generally red or pale green. Especially, they take a crooked and wrapped turn, then thicken and blister, when the infection advances.
The natural evolution of disease is a browning of leaves, which fade and fall from the tree prematurely, from June or July. After this fall, the still buds produce new leaves generally.
Flow of gum often happens.
- Consequences:
The first year, little consequences, other than the premature fall of leaves.
Next year, the weakened tree could be less productive.
- Origin:
It is the spores of the mushroom, produced on the contaminated leaves, that remain the whole season under the scales of buds, and seep through there in spring according to during their mouth. The infection occurs therefore when the leaf buds, going out of their dormancy, begin swelling then opening.
- Treatment
At the end of the autumn, once all leaves fell, and at the beginning of the spring, before the mouth of buds, pulverise some Bordeaux mix (of copper base). Treatments performed at the end of the spring, after the mouth of buds, or during summer, are ineffectual.