What's Eating My Peach Tree?
Peaches are the tenderest tree fruit on the homestead, and their most dangerous enemy attacks the trunk, not the fruit. Check the base of the tree first, then the fruit.
The usual suspects
Peachtree borer
The signs: Globs of gummy sap mixed with sawdust-like frass at the trunk base near the soil line; young trees decline or die from girdling underneath.
What it looks like: The larva is a cream caterpillar under the bark at or below grade; the adult is a wasp-like clearwing moth of midsummer.
What to do: In early spring or fall, carefully dig at the gum spots and destroy borers with a wire; keep grass and mulch off the trunk, and avoid trunk injuries that invite egg-laying. This pest kills young trees — take it seriously.
Oriental fruit moth
The signs: New shoot tips wilt and flag in spring; later generations tunnel fruit from the stem end, often invisibly.
What it looks like: Small pinkish larvae in twigs and fruit.
What to do: Prune out flagged tips promptly, tighten harvest, and remove drops — the tip damage is your early warning to protect fruit.
Plum curculio
The signs: Crescent scars on young fruit, gummy weep spots, and June drop.
What it looks like: The same snout weevil that hits apples and plums, active at petal fall.
What to do: Tarp-and-knock mornings for two weeks after petal fall; sanitation on every drop.
Stink bugs
The signs: Dimpled, distorted 'catfaced' fruit with corky spots beneath the skin from early feeding.
What it looks like: Shield bugs probing young fruit; damage grows with the peach.
What to do: Morning handpicks, weedy-edge management, and tolerance — cosmetic catfacing peels away.
Japanese beetles
The signs: Lacy leaves and gouged ripe fruit in daylight gangs.
What it looks like: Green-and-copper beetles, drawn to ripe peach perfume.
What to do: Soap-water knockdowns and prompt harvest at ripeness.
Squirrels and raccoons
The signs: Fruit stolen whole days before ripeness, branches broken, pits left on fences.
What it looks like: Whole-crop loss in nights is mammal work, not insect.
What to do: Harvest a touch early and finish indoors; metal trunk baffles on isolated trees; electric strand for raccoons.
When it's not a pest at all
Leaves that thicken, pucker, and blister red in spring are peach leaf curl — a fungus infecting at bud swell, cured only by a dormant-season copper spray, not by hunting bugs. Clear amber gum on branches without frass is stress, not borers; borer gum carries sawdust.
Or just point your phone at it
Snap a photo of the leaf, the bug, or the droppings, and Harold — the advisor built into Homestead Paradise — names what he sees, tells you friend or foe, and what he'd do next. Honest when he's unsure, and careful where it counts.
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