I’m glad I have container trees this year as well. I should be able to protect quite a few varieties in the garage.
Yeah…my trade off is i don’t get to park in the garage (wife does) so i’m scraping frost every morning and she can just waltz out and drive off…but my trees are nice and comfy!
2 Likes
What rootstocks are your potted trees on?
I watched that on ky3 last night. The orchard is at Wheaton about 15 miles southwest of me. I got a nice box of peaches from there last year, have some seeds stratifying in the fridge. They have wind machines as they indicate but I’m not sure how much warm air their is to mix in.
mix of stuff…seedling peaches, lovell, citation on a few…
WOW Dave, that is just a very depressing photo. Somehow I’ve made up till now, but every single stone fruit I own is either in bloom or has bloomed and we are expecting 22 degrees tonight, so I have little doubt that mine will look just like that tomorrow. Hope I take it as well as you seem to be!
Ok…i figured it had to be somewhere down there. I think we’ll be seeing a lot of stories in the days/weeks ahead. A lot of money sitting on those trees…sucks. I do this as a hobby…if you were doing it to feed a famiy…yikes.
The center of the high is sitting right over Missouri…
3 Likes
Well Stella blew out to sea here, thank goodness! The wind was horrible. It is now 47 degrees and my buds will be saved (I hope) will know more tomorrow am. Whew, dodged that bullet hope there are not any more! We’re supposed to have flurries, but unless a major cold front comes through, I don’t see that happening either!
2 Likes
Wow,
You are 15 F warmer. We are at 32 and going down to 17 tonight and stay that lowe or lower until Sat.
18z (newest run) 3km nam (a little higher resolution) over the next 60hrs///surface temps…
Just push play
GFS looks a little colder then the NAM
SO here is what I’ve done to protect my favorite tree (Spring Satin Pluot).
What is killing me is that if I had been prepared, this is actually a pretty good system that would be easy and probably work pretty well. But even though I’ve had weeks (if not months) to know this was likely to happen this year, here I am after work trying to piece together enough materials. Darn it me! But if I just had one giant tarp, plastic, or other material, the rest of this set up would be easy and work well.
I just drove 4 pieces of rebarb in the ground in equal distances around the tree, leaving about 1 foot sticking up.I then just slipped 2 pieces of 20 ft PCV onto the rebarb and bent them over to the opposite side. It made a pretty good frame. Then I drove 1 piece of 10 ft metal conduit into the ground in the center, and braced the peak of both the pvc pieces against it so they stay in place and are more sturdy. That’s it for the frame, it took 10 minutes and was very sturdy, very tall, and just a great frame over and around my 7 ft tree.
Next is the weak part…I had to cover it with what I could find and then attach the bed spread and tarps with clothes pin. This won’t take much wind and will likely be the failure of my set up. If I just had one large piece of almost any type of material, I could just pull it over the frame, lay some weaights around the bottom, and be done.
For heat I just put one of those very small 1200 watt 110 volt heaters like some people put under their desk at work. I I’m pretty sure it will be enough to keep the inside temp up to where I need it since we are only getting to 21 here.
21 Likes
Bravo Cityman, you sure will save those flowers from the cold weather.
Tony
Thanks Tony. As I said, I really think I’ve got a great system here if I’d just bought a large enough tarp or plastic to pull over in 1 piece. As it is, if we have any wind at all then my seams will surely fail (clothes pins just don’t have much spring). Oh well…at least now I feel like I tried. Thanks again. Kevin
Looks good Kevin. Just make sure it can handle the wind. Mine held up for about 4 days or so until I came home today to find my tarp in my neighbor’s yard. The winds kicked up and blew the tarp off. I used a combination of zip ties, cloths pins, welding clamps, and speed clamps. I reset the tarp and tied it up stronger. Winds supposed to be around 20 tonight so hopefully it can handle it. The best part is that the buds looked really good. They are showing pink but aren’t open yet.
Also, that heater will be more than enough. Hopefully not too much. I’m using a standard 60 watt bulb. Although my tree is much smaller than yours. Good luck.
2 Likes
Haha, I do that as well. The containers have all been moved in now for the cold moving in tonight.
Yea…there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the weakest part of my set-up is the seams where I had to cobble together my 3 pieces. Next time I’ll have 1 tarp big enough. If I had that, the frame would take the wind. As it is, I wont be surprised to wake up and find all the covering on the ground.
Good luck with yours.
1 Like
We have a hard freeze warning for tomorrow night with temps expected to be below freezing for 5-7 hrs with a low of 27. Will have to rig something up to protect our 2 small orange trees. Unfortunately my stepson’s 9000 sf garden will be almost a total loss 
1 Like
That looks great. With 1200 watts you could crawl in there and spend the night 
should be plenty toasty.
1 Like
I’d second that, 1200W may even be too warm. If your heater has a thermostat built in you probably should set it for 40F or so. Freezing would be bad for the buds, but likely so would being at 95F for a night, especially if its going to be cold when they come “outside” again.
1 Like
