@scottfsmith, did you try Surround to delay your trees? If so, I’m guessing it wasn’t too effective this late since you are still seeing trees progress. Measuring bark temps on my trees over the weekend, there is a pretty large difference between trees in full sun and those that are shaded (~30F when highs were low to mid 60s) so I think it’s worth pursuing. I think I will try diluted white latex paint next year on some of mine after they go dormant to see if I can see a difference.
My guess is it did slow stuff down a bit, but I did it too late as things were already too far advanced. Next year if Feb is getting warm I am going to go full-on with this approach on all the stone fruits.
BTW another way to cool things down could be to wrap the larger branches in alu. foil, that works better than white at reflection. Heat transfer through liquid (sap) is fairly rapid so that could add to the cooling on the buds. It might be worth doing this on part of a tree and see if that part does any better…
Scott, at this point are you just trying to save a few of your favorites, or are you flaming all around your orchard to try to save them all?
yeah, having senior moment without sleep this night I was designing a stable cover in my mind… Came to the conclusion nothing will work… But when the cold is over, are you still going to spray or not? I mean dormant oil spray, copper?
I think I’ll try that. I grafted multiple whips with the same nectarine and pluot varieties this year to increase my chances of getting at least one take for each of the varieties. If I get most or all to take, I may have enough to compare white paint and the aluminum foil with some left over as negative controls.
I have no firm plan but the vague plan is to heat up everything that is at risk at least once. In the previous 17F I had many things faring much better than the charts and the flaming may have been why.
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I did this too. Without a control it is really hard to say. I don’t have two of any one variety, except Harrison, which isn’t old enough to have many flowers.
Then it rained like mad and blew like mad with the storm we had on Monday. All my Surround got washed off the trees I did hit. Ugh. 20 mL/gal of NuFilm 17 did nothing to help the Surround stick. It still came off relatively easy. I’m thinking 50 or 100 mL/gallon for the next coat. What the heck. I’ve got a gallon of NuFilm. I might as well use it.
Then its been in the mid-50’s here the last two days, which has things moving some. My Superior plum is somewhere between bud swell and bud burst and Alderman has moved some too. I even have a few buds on Zestar! apple at silver tip or showing some hints of green.
So are you doing this multiple times per night all night long? Every hour walk through and wave the weed burner around underneath to create a flush of warm air?
I would…if it isn’t too much work. Better safe then sorry. If not cover them if you can.
Jeremy do you grow any stone fruit? Surely your apples aren’t setting fruit before plums, peaches, cots.
Will you sleep at all? That sounds like a long night.
The only stone fruit I have are a couple of very young peach/nectarines seedlings…Not sure what variety, but they may not be mature enough to fruit at this point and they have yet to produce any flowers…
I really hope this isn’t as bad as it looks…if this were to be right…not good. Would think the peach crop in the SE this year might be a little thin…that white line in N Florida…that is the freeze line… Obviously other factors will come into play (clouds/winds/etc)…still looks horrible for the time of year.
oi vey
I’m ready to choke some weathermen. About a week ago they were calling for 30F as a low this weekend. Then lowered it to 26, then 22, then 21, then this morning to 19.
On top of that they said it wasn’t supposed to rain till 3:00 today. I spent most of the morning spraying glyphosate at costly rate, along with marker dye, which is very expensive, and it starts raining heavy at noon. A lot of the dye has washed off, who knows if the weeds have absorbed enough.
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I built a redneck fabulous high tunnel today over my plums. I can’t do a ton for the peaches, but I am hoping to spare most of plums just by keeping the freezing rain off of them we’re expecting. We only expecting 26 to 28, but the plums are already little fruitlets. I am debating putting a halogen work lamp under there, but I am a little concerned about it getting wet and having a problem.
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Hey…if it works… Pretty soon we’ll all be growing under plastic!
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I hope it DOES work. I secured it with a couple T Posts but I am definitely worried about doing more damage than good if the wind blows it over.
You don’t need much heat in that small tent at 26F. A couple of 60W bulbs would do. At 16F I’d want 750W electric heater. A halogen lamp sounds awfully hot. You’ll burn the fruit and leaves that are close by.
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