I haven’t grown peaches since I lived in Ohio. There, in zone 5b/6a, winter flower bud kill was a fairly common occurrence, say once every 3-5 years would see anywhere from moderate to complete bud loss, enough to affect the crop, spring freezes notwithstanding. About once a decade, it would get cold enough to kill entire trees in some spots. So cold hardiness was at least in the top five of concerns when choosing cultivars.
I assume that is rarely an issue in Central MD, is that accurate? Aside from spring frost losses, is it safe to assume that winter bus loss is rare, and actual winter kill from cold temps of peach close to nonexistent?
I have never had any kind of peach loss whatsoever from the weather, not even loss due to early freezes. Peaches are late enough and its not cold enough to do any appreciable damage. I think Matt in western Maryland may have a few more problems since it can get colder there.
Thats the good side, now the bad side is the bugs and diseases are also thriving. We get many generations of OFM etc.
Interesting you have had no spring freeze losses. My neighbor’s peach bloomed around 3/3 this spring, (after the ridiculous warm February), and lost 100% of its crop when we had several episodes of low temps around 20 in March.
This last spring was the worst in about 20 years, I lost all my Japanese plums for the first time ever. Ask your neighbor how their tree has done over the years and I bet this last year was a fluke.
2016 was a particularly bad spring. We had a very late windy freeze that April. None of my peaches were able to set in that horrible weather. Some cold injury needed pruning out. Some buds tried to set, then turned brown and fell off.
I know an Amish farmer in z7a PA who lost all his peach set except Madison one year.
If you select the right varieties, peach tree death from sheer cold is rare. I’ve never seen that problem in z6b.
I would say 9 out of 10 years here, you’re gonna get the peaches to produce something.
It’s my impression that you are in a very favorable microclimate compared to much of the mid Atlantic. And many areas of the East are worse than the mid Atlantic.
I’m in the DC area (Arlington) and most of the peaches at the local community garden and around my neighborhood had pretty big losses, even complete, when their flowers were zapped with a hard frost this Spring. I didn’t see any damage to the trees, but the flowers were zapped and fruit set was spotty or non-existent on a lot of trees. Most of the trees I saw were in full bloom or later when the frost hit. I have a contender, which flowers just a bit later and had good fruit set… and then the OFM got at them… then the squirrels.
At our farmers markets, I see pretty good crops of peaches, so I expect further out they were just later to bud out and didn’t have the same issue.
I am located in the piedmont region of Virginia, south of Matt and Scott. I planted most of my peach trees in 2015. I had five that were big enough to set fruit in 2016. All fruit was lost due to the late freeze mentioned previously. In 2017 I lost 90% of my peach blooms to cold temperatures. I have never seen cold weather damage on any of my peach trees. Local orchards north of me in more mountainous regions faired better according to the local newspaper.