Brown Rot
Risk near you, next 48h
See whether your local forecast favours this disease right now.
When it strikes
Treat, then re-check in 5–7 days
Pick off the worst material, apply the organic option below, and look again after five to seven days. If the spread continued, escalate rather than repeating the same treatment.
Rain and irrigation splash
Water splashing off soil and infected leaves carries it upward and along the row. Watering at the base and mulching the soil surface break the route.
It carries over to next season in soil, debris or seed — which is why rotation matters here, not just treatment.
Keep out of the compost
This survives a garden heap. Bag it for municipal green waste, which is composted industrially at temperatures a garden heap cannot reach, or burn it where that is permitted.
When and where to look
Scout the planting while temperatures hold between 18°C and 28°C, with humidity above 85%, after rain or heavy dew, while the leaves are still wet. Risk builds after roughly 6 unbroken hours of those conditions, so the morning after such a night is the moment to look.
Rule these out first
Same category, and at least one host crop in common — so they are genuinely confusable in the same part of the garden.
The signs that lead here
Full problem lists for these crops
About
Brown rot (Monilinia species) is the most damaging disease of stone fruit — peaches, plums, cherries and apricots — rotting blossoms and fruit in warm, humid weather near harvest.
Symptoms
Blossoms wilt and turn brown (blossom blight); fruit develops expanding brown firm rot covered with tan spore tufts; mummified fruit clings to the tree over winter.
Organic Treatment
Remove mummies and infected twigs, thin fruit to prevent contact, and apply sulfur from bloom through harvest in wet weather.
Chemical Treatment
Propiconazole, myclobutanil, or fenbuconazole at bloom and again as fruit ripens.
Prevention
Prune for airflow, remove all mummified fruit, control fruit-wounding insects, and harvest promptly without bruising.
Crops at risk
Related problems
Brown Rot risk by location
Each location has a month-by-month profile computed from the weather archive: how many hours a year actually meet this disease’s thresholds.