How to Spray Peach Trees

Video transcription

How do I spray my peach tree is the question that a lot of people ask me. This is Richard Skinner at Hawkin's Corner Nursery in Plant City, Florida. And yes, we have peach trees in Florida. How do we spray them? Well, first of all I have to say why do you spray them. We spray them for two reasons. One, the obvious, is insects. The other one that people don't think about at all and that is spraying for fungi. And so there's two different types of spray. Let's cover the insect first. Insects, generally speaking, are the little bugs who come and lay eggs in the bloom. Sometimes they penetrate, you'll have another type of an insect that will penetrate the limb itself. So we want to use a pesticide. If we're spraying in the bloom to keep the insect from laying his eggs there, we want to use a pesticidal soap or perhaps a very, very mild concentration of Malathion and water, and spray it all over your bloom. That'll usually keep that away. Spraying for the insects that would penetrate the bark it has to be a little stronger and you do that at a little different time. If you're not having that problem with bark oozing sap out chances are pretty good that you don't have any insects penetrating your bark, so you don't have to worry about it. The other thing is that we want to be aware that fungus comes in many different categories, but there's a couple of fungicidal sprays that work real, real good on peach trees. One is liquid copper, or dry flowable copper. The other one is Diathane. You can even use those in combination, in other words you can mix them in the same spray if you've got two or three fungicidal problems. Fungicidal problems would be in your root, root-rot, the other would be in your forming of your leaves, you might have rust or one of the other little fungicidal diseases that attacks the top of the tree. Both of those fungicides would, generally speaking, get rid of the problem that you might be having. Just follow the instructions on the package of pesticide and fungicide. This is Richard Skinner coming to you from Hawkin's Corner Nursery in Plant City, Florida on how to spray your peach trees.