The battle against Brown Rot begins

As you may recall, we have scores of productive peach trees, and we have a big problem with a fungal infection. It's time to fight back!

Tom is laboriously and systematically working through the orchard, tackling one tree at a time. For each tree, he is collecting all of the fruit (even the fruit on the ground) and the branches and twigs will diseased leaves. We'll destroy all of those parts in a bonfire. Even though heavy pruning should ideally be done in late winter, these trees have so much brown rot on them that he's taking off some whole limbs, and trying to shape the trees into that preferred vase-shape (or funnel-shape).

Here's a cluster of trees he hasn't trimmed yet:

Note how dense the foliage is, and, although you can't really see them, there are also gray peaches and tufts of brown leaves all over the trees. The next picture shows a trimmed tree:

The structure is looser, and will allow more light and air flow to reach the inside of the tree.

Tom's working on his tenth tree now, and we probably have close to hundred. He started last week. At this rate, he might get to the last ones in late winter--when it WILL be a good time for heavy pruning.