Apricots, peaches and cherry troubles

I have just discovered this forum and am slightly abusing much needed advice for our garden.  

We have apricot and peach trees that put up beautiful flowers, the apricots put up great fruit too, then they get eaten by bugs, some don't make it to a ripe stage, the others we eat when ripe but they have already been eaten by other insects...  The peaches don't really generate fruit.  We have these plants partially inherited by previous owners, and because a friend of my mother-in-law who prunes trees told us that we have the perfect peach environment.  

Our cherry trees, which on a priority list of 1-1,000 is 10,000 for me, produce very little.  They are young trees but they should produce way more than they do.  One is probably 12 years old, it was here when we moved in 9 years ago and it should be producing way more than it does.  We have another sapling that is about 6 years old, and it produces about 30 cherries, then we have a baby who is about 3 years old and she produces about 20.  

If I plant something under these trees would that help at all?  I don't mean a whole food forest, which would be awesome but isn't what I think we will do right now (we have my mother-in-law living with us and she is home way more than we are (we both work) and she is traditional and closed minded as far as planting goes, so she won't readily accept anything other than straight rows, mowed grass and fruit trees in the middle of grass.)  I am trying to inch into this, maybe plant a couple of plants at the base of the fruit tree, then we'll see from there.

Thanks you!
Meyer

I've heard a lot of good things about growing herbs under fruit trees, and I'm going to try growing lavender and some other herbs under my fruit trees this year. In addition to repelling pests, they can also attract beneficial insects like pollinators and pest predators too!

Here's a recent thread discussing it and some other ideas to try to help repel fruit tree pests. https://permies.com/t/106903/Herbs-fruit-trees-repel-pests

I've grown blueberries near my fruit trees with a lot of success, planting them a little outside of the drip line of the fruit tree canopy, or if it's a little tree, you could estimate where the future canopy will end.

If you have any pictures for the peaches and cherries, that may help someone identify what may be causing the lack of production with them?

I tried to take some pictures, although I am about as competent in photography as I am in gardening...

Basically the apricot has little brown spots on the fruit and leaves, some are a bit curled.  Some branches have dried and curled leaves and look very sick.

The curled leaves was much worse last year on the peaches, this tree seems to have set a bunch of fruit (this tree is young, like 3 years old i think) but has some sick branches and i doubt we will make it to ripe with this fruit...

Any advice?

Could be lots of factors but I guess they are still quite young?

I think the best thing you can do with the least disruption is get some decent compost and spread around to the dripline of the tree and hope for the best. If they are young its good to suppress any grass beneath them too.

Having discovered unhappy fruit trees at my gardening customer houses I discovered most of the time they were bought as large as possible and then planted poorly and then had problems adapting to the new environment. Sometimes they didn't dig a big enough hole, tease out pot bound circuling roots or add any ammendments like compost, mulch, liquid seaweed or mycorrhizal fungi. I am not saying this definately is the cause of your woes but it could be, sometimes the nursery will sell you a poor tree to begin with.

Ok, I'm going to try compost and mulcharound them, should i do wood chips or something? I think they are pretty young, we put them in about 2 or 3 years ago, andthey were pdetty small at the time.

As you may have gathered I am starting this active gardeningadventure from a knoeledge level ofabout 0, so I could ptetend to guess the ageof the tree but honestly have no idea.

Thanks for the recommendation!

Welcome, Meyer.

I suggest you go to any woods close to where your trees are, collect some mushrooms (ground-growing ones, and preferably not poisonous), blend them up with non-chlorinated water, and pour the slurry around your trouble trees. Alternately, I would take whatever mushrooms you eat and trim the butts, reserving them in the refrigerator until you have enough to make another slurry. Or you could just buy mushrooms from the store and make a mushroom slurry from them.

Trees prefer a soil that leans further toward a fungal-dominated biology, and if you're growing mostly grass and vegetables, which are more bacterially than fungally active, the trees might be lacking the support networks provided by the fungi.

More information than you could possibly ever use is available in Dr. Redhawk's Wiki of Epic Soil Threads. I suggest you skim it, and read in detail whatever might apply to your situation.

But let us know how it goes, and good luck.

-CK

Chris Kott wrote:Welcome, Meyer.

I suggest you go to any woods close to where your trees are, collect some mushrooms (ground-growing ones, and preferably not poisonous), blend them up with non-chlorinated water, and pour the slurry around your trouble trees. Alternately, I would take whatever mushrooms you eat and trim the butts, reserving them in the refrigerator until you have enough to make another slurry. Or you could just buy mushrooms from the store and make a mushroom slurry from them.

Trees prefer a soil that leans further toward a fungal-dominated biology, and if you're growing mostly grass and vegetables, which are more bacterially than fungally active, the trees might be lacking the support networks provided by the fungi.

More information than you could possibly ever use is available in Dr. Redhawk's Wiki of Epic Soil Threads. I suggest you skim it, and read in detail whatever might apply to your situation.

But let us know how it goes, and good luck.

-CK

Hi Chris,
I wrote another post but didn't get any replies.  We have lots of porcini in our area, could we buy some spores or something online and "plant" them under the trees?  Unfortunately we don't recognize many mushrooms other than chanterelle and porcini (which are hard to find as lots of people go mushroom hunting here) and I worry that we would put something poisonous (we have small kids, a dog, and chickens and rabbits).  We would also love to "plant" mushrooms in general, so would this be doable?  Are those packs that you find online valid?

If not, I might just buy some mushrooms and and make the slurry as you suggested.

Thanks!
Meyer

Hi Meyer,
I am new to the world of pc (just took a course over last 6 months but that is it), but we did have a good success with a peach tree this summer that had the same issues, leaf curl, teeny fruits and teeny output.  Last year I treated the yard with homeopathic silica 12x (just put a dose in a bucket and sprayed around the curled plants).  This past spring we retrofitted a big sheet mulch around the tree, with soil, newspaper, some cardboard and old echinacea stalks, let it sit for about a month, then planted lupine and false indigo close to the base.  It has done amazingly well, hundreds of yummy peaches.  Actually too many to support, so that we had to pick many before they were ripe so the tree wouldn't fall over!  Oy!  If it's not one thing, it's your mother!
Sheet mulching is miraculous!  I imagine adding shrooms to that would be superearthly. . Best wishes,
Laura Whyte