Subject: peach tree woes continued

From: [email-masked] (weikel)
Date: 13 May 1996 00:39:15 GMT

My peach tree started to wilt a few weeks after sprouting
leaves.  The branches became stiff and dark.

Well,  I took a tiny pen knife and removed a tiny bit of bark from
the truck.  It was a healthy green-gold underneath.  I then
repeated this on all of the branches.  Each was an unhealthy 
tan color.  I pruned off several branches and cut them open.
They were all dry, but there were no signs of borers or disease.
I'm thoughly depressed.  I dug a little into to soil and it
seemed nice and unformly moist, and free of insects.  I'm 
stumped (forgive the pun) as to what might be causing my tree
to suffer so profoundly.  I read as many book as I could find
in the library and the bookstore as I could on tree ailment,
and nothing seem to resemble what is wrong with my tree
(except frost damage, but it has been 70-90 degrees around here
lately.)  It is as though the life is simply draining out of it.
I've had the tree for almost exactly a year, and it seemed fine 
until April.  It is a dwarf tree and bore two peachs last year.

I don't know what to do.  One book suggest cutting away all of the
dead wood, but I'm afraid that would only leave a bare trunk.
Another book said to cut only in cold weather.  I'm willing to
do anything to save my tree, but don't want to make the damage
worse.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 14:49:48 GMT

Since all trees start as a "bare trunk", dont be concerned about that. If
there is any life in the tree, it will send out branches. However, you
didnt say where this tree came from. This is important. It unfortunately
sounds like one of two problems. It is on incompatible rootstock which is
"rejecting" the graft (just like human transplantation does). It is
rejecting the part that bears peaches. Often, after the rejection, the tree
leafs out in spring and then dies (last gasp). The second problem is that
your tree came in a "pot" of some sort. I dont know if you took the tree
out of the pot and looked at the roots before planting in the larger
planter, but if the roots went around and around at the bottom, it may have
been rootbound. When this happens, unless slits are made in the rootball
and roots are freed up, the roots will not leave the original rootball and
enter the new dirt. Furthermore, watering is a severe problem because the
new soil is wet to the touch, but the old rootball may never have gotten
adequate moisture (the reason some people put some plants INTO a container
of water to soak. When you were checking the soil, did you find any roots
beyond the original rootball?... the third thing is that you made a mistake
in letting the new tree set fruit... Fruiting sends a hormonal message to
the tree the stop growing any larger.  What do you think, get back to me..
Ingrid