Peach Leaf Curl and Corn Block Planting

Fungicide sprays are effective for treating peach leaf curl only during the fall, winter and very early spring before the new leaves begin growing. (LS92/Shutterstock)

Q: I have a peach tree that I am worried has a problem. Last spring, I noticed the leaves started curling up and got quite lumpy, for lack of a better term. It is back again this year. I don’t see any aphids or other insects in the curled-up leaves. What caused this? Is there a cure for it? Will it affect the fruit?

A: Hopefully, you only have this on a few leaves. It is the fungal disease known as peach leaf curl. It can be severe when the leaves expand during cool, wet weather. The leaves become puckered and deformed, and they often turn red or other colors. The infected leaves will fall off. New leaves that come out in dry weather will be normal.

Stems and fruit can be infected, too. They will have swollen, distorted shapes and colors. Over the years, continued infections will weaken the tree. This fungus hides in the leaf buds over the winter and infects the new leaves as they come out. Fungicide sprays are effective only during the fall, winter, and very early spring, before the new leaves begin growing.

If the leaves are already out and show symptoms this spring, you will want to spray this fall. In the meantime, remove all the infected parts as they fall off the tree. If the tree only has a few infected branches or leaves, you can prune them, but if it is all over the tree, just pick up the stuff that drops and spray when it is dormant.

Q: A neighbor and I planted sweet corn in our backyard gardens. I planted them as a row across the back of the garden so they won’t block sunlight on the other plants. He planted his in a square because he said they will pollinate each other better. What do you think?

A: I tend to agree that the block planting method will produce fuller ears of corn. Corn is a grass, and grasses are wind-pollinated. In other words, the pollen transfers from the male flower to the female flower via the wind.

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The male flowers are the tassels at the top of the corn stalk. They release millions upon millions of pollen grains into the air. The ear of corn is lined with a few hundred female flowers. Each female flower has a single silk hanging outside the protection of the sheath of leaves surrounding the ear. To get a kernel of corn, a pollen grain must float off the tassel and onto a silk.

If your corn plants are all in a row or two and the wind blows the pollen across the rows, there will be few silks pollinated and, therefore, few kernels on the ear. For corn planted in a block, no matter which way the wind blows, it will be blowing some pollen toward other corn plants.

Male tassel flowers start blooming before the silks are ready and continue until after most silks are pollinated. If you only have a few corn plants, you could take a tassel off and shake it onto each ear of silks to try to get better pollination. If an ear continues to grow silks after the pollen is gone, the end of the ear will not have kernels. Plant your blocks of corn once a week for a month or more so that there will be tassel flowers maturing and releasing pollen for a longer time and so you can harvest fresh corn over a longer time.

(Courtesy of Jeff Rugg)

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