Pests & diseases › Brown Rot
Brown Rot
Fungal disease of stone fruit — peaches, plums, cherries, apricots. Fruit turns brown and shrivels into hard mummies.
Symptoms
- Brown soft circular rot on ripening fruit
- Powdery tan spore tufts on rotting fruit
- Mummified shriveled fruit hanging on the tree through winter
- Twig dieback from blossom infections
Lifecycle
Spores overwinter on mummified fruit and twig cankers.
What to do
- Remove all mummified fruit from tree and ground over winter
- Sulfur sprays starting at pink bud
- Copper sprays at dormancy
If it's bad
- Captan, myclobutanil at petal fall and three weeks before harvest
Stop it coming back
- Winter sanitation is critical — remove every mummified fruit
- Prune for open airflow
- Resistant peach varieties (limited): Glenglo, Babygold series
Crops it goes for
Plan the plot, track every sowing, cook the harvest
Sowing reminders and harvest forecasts for your own frost dates, the Seed Tin, Scan Centre for any label or packet, and the Potty Mouth Garden Club. Free to start.