Well it went down to 30 last night. The pears were burnt bad. A lot of shoots that were over six inches long have been killed outright. I’m really worried that the weather might have killed my fig trees which were completely leafed out. We shall see. I’m guessing that the only fruit I will get this year will be muscadines and a little citrus from my immature citrus trees. Thankfully they require lots of heating hours in the 80s to sprout. If there is a silver lining to all of this, the young pear trees and blueberries will have a growing season devoted to just growing and storing energy for next year. With the huckleberries we don’t even have that silver lining because most of them were nearly full sized and just a couple of weeks away from beginning to ripen,. God bless.
Ltilton,
I’m not sure where my rabbit killers ran off to but no doubt they are out galavanting around on someone else’s farm wiping out their rabbits. Hope they get home pretty quick and take care of my new invasion.
Sorry to read of your misfortune Marcus. Everyones location seems very up in the air this year. Thought most years your area grows great pears but I guess there is no point to try and understand this weather. We’ve had bloom leaf and blooms burned on pears but at this point I think we have a crop. My young pears seem more tender than the old ones or perhaps those are the buds I sprayed with copper and dormant oil. I’m losing plenty of flowers so I’m just going to post an update later if we lose everything or do not. The wind helps a lot here because a 30 mile per hour wind on a cold night does not let the frost settle.
Have you built any raptor poles/perches? I put a few in one of my orchards last spring and the number of different raptors I saw on them last year was pretty cool.
I have plenty of trees and electric poles too, but some raptors prefer to be closer to the ground. Those that I put up are around 10-12’. The perches are built out of 1x2"s, a narrow perch suits some of the smaller raptors better.
Anything I can do to increase predation on mice/gophers/moles/bunnies/squirrels/etc…I’m in.
No, I was hoping it would bloom this year but looks like I will have to wait another year. It would have been frozen this year if it had bloomed. My Asian pear is still dormant and may be my only hope for fruit this year.
Sorry to hear about your crops loss. We got lucky because the trees were about to buds out 2 1/2 weeks ago and We got a snow storm that keep the temp in the 20s to 30s to slow down the bloom. Now the temps is 60s and most of the trees are near tight clusters.
The one tree I saved from damage was my satsuma citrus. It has flushed out and is blooming and can’t take much cold right now. I bought this greenhouse to get me through the winter because my frost cloth was no longer big enough to cover the tree and was a pain to but up the 2 or 3 times I would need it. The greenhouse is easy to put up and is well made, it stayed over the tree all winter with the door open and zipped up on cold nights. I did have to pull it back out for this cold snap but that only took a minute. https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71Cv1bfL4HL.SL1001.jpg https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01L10BWKY/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1
@c5tiger, Are you dealing with heavy snow or wind in your winter? It looks great, but I am not sure how would it stay with 1’ of snow with 40-60 mph wind gusts… This is what we had few days back. I am thinking about building permanent shed like structure with removable panels on walls and roof for most sensitive trees, will start with my just arrived persimmon, when all this snow melts. I understand, that it is only could be a solution for back yard growers with just few trees, like me.
