If you are allowed to water then you are not experiencing a drought so you didn't need to water your fruit trees, even bare root trees will start rooting without watering besides rain and the natural water stored in the soil.

So you've overwatered. Peaches originate in Iran and are used to establishing roots in dry conditions. Overwatering impedes root formation.

The excess water has created the conditions to allow this disease to establish easily and the way to prevent it is to pluck the leaves, toss in the trash, and the only water to allow is from rain.

If the tree is in a sunny spot then even with the infected native trees of the neighbors your peach is liable to stay disease free once you pluck infected leaves and stop watering.

That's peach leaf curl. It can only be controlled by spraying before the buds start to swell in spring. Do the search function there are plenty of prior posts discussing control. It doesn't directly affect the fruit. That's only an issue if most of the tree is defoliated. Three leaves won't affect a thing.

It doesn't infect apples.

If your peach fruit is affected that's another issue like plum currculio or Oriential fruit moth.

So, because I didn't notice this early enough in the year, does this mean I'm going to lose yet ANOTHER year of fruit?

If I spray this Fall, will I get a harvest next spring?

PS, I did read some of the posts but the epsom salt I do have, I'm not sure if it's the safe-for-plants supplement. I do have high-nitrogen fertilizer though. The ratio is 13-4-5. Will this work?

Dispose of the leaves with PLC, just pick them off as you see them. It doesn't affect the fruit....

If you spray the proper material for PLC late fall and early spring it won't be an issue. Having it on 3-4 leaves this year won't ruin your crop. Infection only occurs in early spring. Spraying now won't help and there won't be more infected leaves to come.

If you are losing your peach fruit in summer it's not PLC unless there is massive defoliation. It's probably either PC or OFM that I mentioned in my last post. Those are both insects that bore into the fruit.

PLC will not make the fruit drop, something else is doing that. Epsom salts or fertilizer won't help, you need copper or Chlorothalonil. Apply at leaf fall in late autumn. When conditions
favor high disease levels apply once or twice
more in mid to late winter before budswell.

I myself would treat for PLC (peach leaf curl) even though you only had a small infection, your tree has it, and it will get worse every year, till it does drop the fruit.

This post was edited by Drew51 on Sun, Jun 8, 14 at 16:39

Some fruit drop every year is natural on all fruiting trees and nuts that I've ever seen.

They mostly produce flower buds for optimistic fruiting season and drop fruit according to whether or not the weather supports that 'optimism' over the course of the entire growing season. It's like that with most things in nature, I bet none of that fruit grow into bearing trees.

I have a Nectarine out in the open,that was sprayed with Bonide's Fung-onil(Chlorothalonil),once in the Fall and twice in late Winter/early Spring and the the tree still had it on almost every branch tip.
The probable reason may have been,that the March precipitation was one of the highest if not the most recorded for this area.
I also have a dwarf Peach in a container,which was sprayed too,but was brought into a carport during rainy times and didn't suffer any PLC.
There are also two young Nectarines planted under one hundred foot tall Douglas Firs,that have a very small amount of the disease,even with the same spraying.They are sheltered somewhat by the boughs of the larger trees.
I went a workshop where Gary Moulton,who was the head of the fruit horticulture program at the WSU extension research station,said that if possible,keeping the rain off the trees from bud break to leafing out will go a long way to curb this infection.
Now I know that this for most people,is not practical or possible,but I think it's something I may try,at least the one Nectarine.Maybe some kind of large clear plastic umbrella or shelter and it only has to be in place for a few weeks. Brady