i should add that i could not see any bugs or bug larva in the brown gunk seen in the final pic though i was only looking with a naked eye

I am not an expert but to me it looks like fireblight, but I have never sen it in person.

Fireblight does not infect stone fruit trees to the best of my knowledge. Anyone else have any ideas? (I'm desparate to try and get to the bottom of this

I stand corrected, having just spoken to the local extension office, they informed me that stone fruit can get fire blight.

You should call your extension office back and tell them they are fired - stone fruit don't get fireblight.

Your damage is almost certainly the burrowing of oriental fruit moth larvae last year. I have many peach tips with the same damage. If you don't find the burrowing shown in your photo of the cut apart one and the leaf growth is browned and dying then you have what letsski mentioned.

Right now the first generation this year is starting its own burrowing. They will continue to do that all year, expanding to attack the fruit in a few weeks as well. I pinch off any damaged-looking fresh growth on the tips to limit the number of moths I will get. RIght now I am finding about half a dozen damaged tips on my 40 or so peach trees each day.

Scott

Scott's correct, no fireblight on stone fruit. This is another example where many extension personnel are unqualified to handle all but the simplest questions about fruit growing.

When I first saw the pics, I thought of OFM but here OFM attacks the green shoots and wilts them. According to Lycheeluva, these shoots made it through winter healthy and leafed out, then dropped their leaves (At least that's how I read it.) That would mean this was one year old wood when the moths attacked, and I've not seen OFM go after one year wood. Still the hole in the middle of the wood makes one suspicious of OFM.

I believe there are other moths whose larvae burrow into 2-year wood of several plants around here, including ribes, so I wonder if it might not be an unusual occasion of this happening to peach.

At any rate it probably doesn't constitute a big threat to the peach as long as there's plenty of healthy shoots to bear this year's crop. It might just be a one time phenomena.

@olplea- "According to Lycheeluva, these shoots made it through winter healthy and leafed out, then dropped their leaves (At least that's how I read it.)"

no- i dont know when the leaves were defoliated- could have been last season and not all the effected shoots have defoliation- some just have the black crusty tip shown in the pics.

so the first extension officer ui spoke to fwded the pics to a more experienced officer who also thought it was probably OFM.

So now that I know that it is prob OFM. What do i do to combat the problem (this black crunchy tip thing has been going on for years)when i opened up the crunchy tip shown in these pics, i saw the brown gunk you see in the pics but i didnt see any bug or worm - is that because they r too small to see with naked eye or because they left the plant before i cut it open? do i need to make sure to cut off every black tip i see? if the answer is yes, how come, if i didnt see any bug inside the tip?

LL, what are you doing to keep the OFM off the peaches? If you are spraying a poison then just hit the tips more with your spray. If you are bagging then prune off the flagging tips. Along with tip pruning I use spinosad/oil sprays on the tips to help control them, a less toxic spray. Also I use mating disruption to generally reduce their population.

After looking at peach tips for several years I can now spot the earliest signs of damage, either a small wilt, or very slight browning right where the new leaves are coming out. This means my hand tip pruning really cuts back on the longer term problem. So far the biggest worm I have found was about 1mm long. My main problem is with 40 trees I get pretty sick of staring at peach tips by July and things always slip.

Scott

It was said: "where many extension personnel are unqualified to handle all but the simplest questions about fruit growing."

More than likely it wasn't an extension agent but was, instead a Master Gardener volunteer.

Master Gardener volunteers typically receive a crash course rather than an intensive training as one would receive attending a college or university. As a group, they sincerely want to help other gardeners while researching answers. Some are better at that than others. In many instances, their lack of an extended education hampers them.

I've gotten misinformation from the most pedigreed of consultants. Carelessness is not the sole domain of minimally trained amateurs. Horticulturalists in states where there's not a lot of home orchards are probably not going to be well versed in the issues of fruit pests. You just have to hope answers are based on clear understanding and not distant memory.

I find the horticulturalists at my counties CE to be very helpful, but they certainly aren't fruit experts.

I've sought fruit advice before from local extension personnel and it's been meager at best.

I know one guy who lost all of his peaches in what he described to me was clearly a PC problem, yet his local extension personnel told him he had a pollination problem (because his fruit was dropping).

There are some extension personnel who are very sharp tree fruit specialists, but those folks typically work in states that have significant fruit industries.

I showed my uncle the picks and he said you have 2 problems. 1 is a spray for thing, the other is winter kill. He said winter kill was normal when the late shoots hadn't hardened off in time and the winter had a week or more of -10. He has no formal training but he still farms the land he was born on and at 80 he has watched 2 to 4 generations of fruit trees come and go. I am only 54 so I seldom win at the september picnic get together. he is the only judge so I think he is biased. One small bite from an apple pie win or lose. It's not a state fair but there are 5 generations of comp. 25 family's . When I go to my exten for a problem of a tree not local farmed she say's you have come to a Ford dealer for a Dodge problem, I will try to find answers but I will only be book learning. Gramp used to say "ok collage boy what are you going to do now".

I'd go with winter kill.

I'm seeing a LOT of PLC here. Must have been the long dragged out """spring""" that never warmed up until the second week of May. I sprayed with copper, but obviously not enough times.

raven- can i get some more info from your uncle. the defoliation is the winter-kill and the black tip is the bug problem? ofm? his suggested spray to remedy?

scott- i use triazide till the peaches are about almond sized- at that point i know most of the fruit that i leave on the tree after thinning will prob make it to maturity so i cover as many as my sanity will allow with footies

nectarin tree has small fruit fruit is seeping jelly substance from skin.

I agree that it is OFM (Sevin powder on the tips and foliage tends to work)

or

a type of twig dieback/canker syringae (cutting far below the infeection with CLEAN clippers and then spraying copper on the new cut and surrounding twigs/buds will control the problem and slow it down and best to prevent future infections)