North Central Ia under tnado warnings right now. Very windy and 77 degrees today. Big storms soon.
2 Likes
Managed 65F here this evening. Ran in shorts and a tshirt… Strong line of storms moved through, but nothing severe…just a ton of lightning. Excited for the tsunami winds tomorrow. Love me some wind.
2 Likes
Temps in the low 50’s with high winds. Tnados to the east. Lots of small h**l.
Windy here. Just a little pea hail. Lots of rain. The storm took a big bend around Iowa City and looks like we are getting a longer show than others to our west.
We had two nights of temps that were supposedly a low of 20 and it fried all the bloom buds on our baby Redhaven peach tree. It was the furthest along of our three with the buds looking like they’d pop any minute. Today I looked at them and the buds are squish and brown. I had hoped they’d make it through since they weren’t open yet but perhaps it dipped below 20 out in our open field, I don’t know. The other two look like most of the buds are still viable but they’re only a heartbeat away from opening as well.
We have a giant crabapple that was in full bloom mid April last year (and still got hit with a late freeze and lost all its blooms) that is already showing green and not far from blooming if the weather warms again. Poor thing. I don’t know what the fruit tastes like as we’ve not lived here long enough to get any but it is a beautiful tree in bloom, fragrant too. I hate to see it heading for almost certain failure again.
Not to sound like I’m taunting the people with far worse weather than I, but how can you pick out frost damage? We only hit 26 earlier this week, and briefly, and while I’m not expecting to lose everything at that temp, I expected to see some kind of damage. My Contender was in full bloom when the temp dropped, and my other peaches, almonds and plums are already setting fruit and done blooming. I still see bright green plum nubbins, and don’t see any petals or leaves that look singed, but I’m not sure what exactly I should be seeing, or if some of the blossoms that look good now will simply fail to set fruit so I won’t know for a couple weeks. My cherries are just blooming now (although very little since I cut them WAAAY back to try and encourage growth), and we’ve got more 27ish temps due by weekend.
You can tear the receptacle open and look at the ovary. If it’s brown, it’s dead. It can take a week or more before dead flowers fall off, so it’s pretty much impossible to tell frost damaged flowers from just walking by and looking at them.
News this morning called for 22F as low on Sun. morning. That will of course toast any open blooms here. We started blooming peaches yesterday. The next 3 days of 60s and 70 will open quite a few blooms. We are already short on flower buds from the Dec. cold blast of -9F. I’ve known it was going to be a high probability of crop loss because of the strange weather and have pretty low expectations, but it’s still not fun to watch.
Yesterday was the earliest bloom of peaches ever. It broke last years early blooming record by one week.
I’m really thinking these hardier peach varieties are the better course. Not only do they handle winter better, but they bloom later. Loring is a great peach, but is known for winter tenderness. I didn’t see very many fruit buds on those trees yesterday. Contender ripens in the same window and it’s loaded. Bounty also ripens at that time and, as usual, is very scant. I’ve already started replacing Bounty.
I’m really pretty disappointed in some of Paul Friday’s varieties. Some are good, but some are showing themselves to be unproductive. 24-007 and 28-007 are complete losers for productivity. They only work if the stars align and the weather is perfect.
2 Likes
I now understand why NC State only suggest peaches with high chill hours for my area. Its amazing how far behind Contender (1050) and Redhaven (950) are compared to the others. Wish I had more high chill hour peach variety to choose from. Rich May started blooming about 2 weeks ago and Contender is just starting. After complete peach loss last year, I hope to have some peaches this year, but Saturday night is going to be around 28. I sell more blueberries than peaches and they are questionable also. Apples and Blackberry look fine at the moment, but its a long time until our average last frost date around mid April. Looking like I may take a long summer vacation, because all the fruit will be toasted by the freeze.
2 Likes
I assume you are wishing you had more of those high chill trees planted, rather than what you have? Or are wishing their were more varieties like Contender? If it is the latter, then there are some newer, patented varieties from NC State.
I just planted Challenger, Intrepid, and Carolina Gold from Vaughn Nursery. All are NC State introductions along the same vein as Contender. China Pearl is a white peach from NC State also reported to be high chill (I don’t like white peaches much).
According to Vaughn, and by my back-calculation vs. Redhaven:
Challenger +4
Intrepid +11
Carolina Gold/China Pearl +32
Yeah…watch Sunday morning. This is the newest run. Lots of very cold air to tap into still.
The reason the cold temps is the gfs wants to paint snow from S Dakota/Omaha down through Missouri and across Very south Illinois…maybe a little into Kansas…then drop high pressure over that fresh snow…drop the winds…game over. Say no to snow.
Currently -35F in Fairbanks, AK
http://w1.weather.gov/obhistory/PAFA.html
How does it get to be 7F in MO but further north it is warmer?
Just looking at the 12z Euro…shoots a low right at Wisconsin early next week… behind it cold high pressure…no doubt we’ll be seeing subzero readings around these parts if that comes to pass.
Where was this in January?
1 Like
Yep, Wish I had more high chill peaches like Challenger, Intrepid, and Carolina Gold. They are all excellent peaches, but they were out of stock when I planted the orchard 5 years ago. If my planning was better, I would have placed the order early and had a better selection!
Carolina Gold is an excellent peach in my climate, especially for a late peach. One of its parents is a Spanish peach called San Miquel. Not much peach breeding at NCSU due to budget cutbacks, but a new peach called Montgomery Gold which shares the San Miquel parent should be available in a few years. The folks at the research farm really like the peach, but I have not tasted it.
If frost/freeze continues to be a problem, I may have to look at pushing out some peach variety and replacing them with something with higher chill hours. Its hard to follow peaches with peaches which would require me to fumigate the rows before planting again.
1 Like
We are dipping down to 29 degrees this weekend. I’m a little concerned my area typically runs a couple of degrees colder. Some trees are in full bloom. Dicey weather for sure. I have a spray of copper and dormant oil on but it rained a little the day after I applied it. Hard to out maneuver this weather.
Ah, excited to hear they are good! I can only grow the hardiest due to my 5b location. And I need every last bit of chill as I get frost later than the local average due to my location on the land.
1 Like
It’s foretasted to go to 11 Friday night. It was looking like my first bumper crops but now it looks like I just wont do any thinning, lol Looking on the bright side.
1 Like
UGH!!!
They keep lowering the temps in the forecast. Calling for low of 10 deg. now.
Drew
Where are you located in 5B? For some reason, the impact of high chill hours was not very apparent until this year in my area. Might be the extreme weather that made the difference so visible. The lower chill hour peaches will have completed bloom before Redhaven and Contender even start!