Stone fruit trees and fungicide

everyone around here (foothills of NC) insists you can only successfully grow stone fruits if you use fungicides quite regularly. is anyone growing stone fruits around here without the fungicides? any thoughts or tips? I imagine the general permaculture resilience helps quite a lot but anything specific is helpful. I’d love to plant peaches and plums but am not willing to use fungicides

What specific fungus is it trying to prevent?

What are they doing to the soil to make the tree stronger?

I've used Sulphur on some fruit trees in the past,  made no difference so I saved my money and spent it on lime to spread around the drip line of each tree each winter.  Much bigger difference.

Em, Hello,  Happy Sol-stead day to you.  Peaches, I really love them.  My farm’s soil in western WA loves to decompose them with fungus, soil bacteria, and bugs faster than they can grow.  Stubborn and hungry I planted 10 around my 8b farm in a few wetter micro climates.  6 did not even leaf out of dormancy, and by the next year all had died.  I have native roses, and cherries,( same family as) peaches so they should be able to make it here.  Companion planting with a Rosa rugosa, (local wild rose) has worked with Elberta, Frost, Red Haven, but peaches still seemed slow growing.  In places I have only clay, so soil depth with deeper planting 4’ holes of my own compost was a start.  Later, planting in dry locations stand alone Baby Crawford, King George, and a John Fanick with 4-5 grams pelleted zinc sulfate in the soil near the tree 4-5 inches from trunk the peaches took off.  Adding spring Composted Pig manure (phytic acid rich phosphates) 2’ out narrow ring of 2lbs wet and water timely causes roots to chase outward ie more growth.  
Copper or Zinc Sulfates, I don’t like either fungicide, mossicide/algaecide.  Yet the second you plant peaches they start to get eaten by everthing so a small amount of Zn SO4 at least encourages quick and abundant leaf growth, limits pathogenic colonization, which helps slow the decomposition of the trunk.  One more ring of zinc just outside manure line from tree at year 2 same amount, and that’s it, no more.  ZnSO4 binds into horseradish, garlic companions planted just inside the manure line helps bug and larger competitive friends mind the P’s and Q’s.  This is a start. I hope this helps, Cheers.

Nature lives everyday in balance.  On Solstice we free ourselves of gravity at the top of Earth’s orbital arc, as time steads our sun to equity twice yearly to remind us.  

Copper spray in late autumn after leaf drop has made more difference than anything else for my plums, keeps the bacterial canker in check at least. Never felt the need to spray during the season though, and the trees have been fine. I think the folks insisting on regular fungicide treatments are mostly managing commercial-style orchards where any blemish is unacceptable, not backyard trees where a bit of scab doesn't really matter.

My climate is cool and wet enough that peaches struggle. There are some heirloom varieties that soldier on and give me a decent crop, but I treat them all as short-lived trees and keep planting seedlings to replace them, because they inevitably give up. I used to spray the trees at bud break with dilute wood vinegar or horsetail infusion to control leaf curl, but now I just lean toward varieties that show natural resistance.

I don't like to use copper because it builds up in the soil. I prefer to put lots of biochar and wood chips around my fruit trees, along with understory plants, in the hopes that a diverse soil biota will overwhelm the pathogens and tip the balance in favour of the things I want to grow.