Article from
VSCNews, Vegetable and Specialty Crop News
by Brenna Kendrick
Winter Defoliation for Florida Peaches
According to Ali Sarkhosh, assistant professor of tree fruit at the
University of Florida, peach growers in Florida should consider the
leaves on their peach trees during two times of the year. The first
time is after harvesting the fruit in June, July and August. He says
it’s important to keep the leaves on trees during this time because
there are a lot of diseases that can occur, like peach leaf rot and
bacterial spot. Failure to control these diseases will cause
defoliation.
“That’s the first thing that growers need to keep
in mind; keep the leaves as much as you can after harvest,” says
Sarkhosh. “We don’t want to have any defoliation because of diseases at
that time of the year.”
The second time of year growers should
think about defoliation is in November/December. Growers don’t want to
have early defoliation, but “it is important to defoliate your trees in
November or in the early weeks of December, depending on where you are
located,” explains Sarkhosh. Growers should defoliate their peach trees
when they’re in frost temperatures. According to Sarkhosh, this can
happen in the middle of October or the first part of November in
North/North Central Florida. “Growers can defoliate the peach trees in
October or early November in North Florida, but we cannot do that in
South and Central Florida because the cooler temperatures in that area
won’t start until December. Because of this, using zinc sulfate on the
tree around Thanksgiving could work for most peach-growing regions in
Florida,” he says.
The main reason for defoliation in the cold
months is to make the fruit on the branches more receptive to the cool
temperatures. Without defoliation, trees will need more chilling units,
which will cause late flowering and late harvesting. “We don’t want
that to happen in Florida because if it happens, our fruit production
will overlap with Georgia and South Carolina, and it’s not easy to
compete with them,” explains Sarkhosh. “That’s why we like to defoliate
peaches this time of the year to have flowering in January and to start
harvesting fruit in the first or second week of April.”
Growers
can use zinc sulfate or copper sulfate to defoliate their trees. “We
recommend zinc sulfate because there is some deficiency on the sandy
soil here, so zinc sulfate is a better recommendation to use for peach
defoliation,” says Sarkhosh. “The rates can really depend on how many
leaves we have on the trees, so something around 8 to 10 pounds per 100
gallons would defoliate the peach tree in Florida.”
Sarkhosh
stresses that it’s critical for growers to defoliate their peach trees
at the right time to have flowering at the right time and harvesting of
fruit during the Florida production window.
Ali
Sarkhosh is a University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural
Sciences assistant professor and Extension specialist in the
Horticultural Sciences Department in Gainesville.
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