Peach vs Sweet cherry

In Central Europe peach leaf curl (Taphrina deformans) appears every year: the emerging leaves thicken, blister, turn red and fall, and the tree weakens year after year. It can only be prevented: a copper wash before bud burst, then a systemic fungicide when the first tiny leaves show, repeated several times in a cool, wet spring; once curled leaves are visible it is too late. A sunny, airy site and a more resistant cultivar reduce the problem. Other troubles are powdery mildew (mainly on nectarines), shot hole, Monilia blossom and shoot blight and fruit rot, aphids, peach twig borer and oriental fruit moth, which tunnel in shoots and fruit, and plum pox virus. Flower buds are damaged by hard winter frost (roughly below minus 20 °C) and the blossom by spring frost. It fruits on the previous year's shoots, so it needs hard pruning every year (around flowering or in summer, not in winter) or it goes bare inside; the tree often declines after just 15 to 20 years, hastened by gummosis and branch dieback. Do not replant a peach in the same spot, and expect yellowing leaves (iron deficiency) on chalky soil.

In Central Europe the main nuisance is cherry fruit fly: the European species has been joined by the later-flying eastern cherry fruit fly, and the maggots spoil the fruit of mid-season and late varieties, while early varieties mostly escape. In wet springs Monilia kills blossoms and shoots and rots the ripening fruit; cherry leaf spot, bacterial canker and gumming also occur. Rain before harvest splits the fruit, and starlings and blackbirds can strip a tree in days, with large trees almost impossible to net. Because it flowers early, spring frost often takes the crop, and the tree does not tolerate waterlogged soil. Prune in summer after harvest, as winter wounds are easily infected.