Strange weather - Will it get our blooms and fruit?

29/30 is balmy, no worries :grinning:

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If you can stay in the upper 20s and have some wind movement you can usually dodge the worst of the damage.

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Lots more of you with long term history growing fruit than me. When you have a string of warm days early, then back to seasonal cold does that put the trees back into winter dormancy. Or do the buds just maintain that level of “awakedness” and so the next warm spell they pretty much pop? I have seen no bud movement here and after tomorrows high of 70 we will go back to the 40s for highs mid teens for lows.

I checked my apricot,and peach’s buds,some of them,the middle bud looked dry out/ dead / not as developed as outside ones

I have more experience with buds than fruit, lol. Mine seem so stay stuck where they are when it gets cold enough again, which is a really good thing here where a few degrees of hardiness is all we usually need.

My trees have just gotten old enough to be productive in the last couple of years. Unfortunately that coincided with unseasonably warm weather early and late hard freezes. But I’ve watched them form fruit at least :smiley:

This year may work. We had an awful prolonged spell of very warm weather, bloom is much too early, but it feels like our dips won’t be as deep now, like it’s really spring. It’ll be a nail-biter these first couple of weeks of March, but I’m still optimistic.

Temperate fruit trees have what they call endodormancy and ecodormancy. Trees go into endodormancy when they lose their leaves in the fall. They stay in endodormancy till chill hours have been met. In endodormancy, trees can lose some hardiness during periods of warm weather, but they can regain hardiness as temperatures cool back down.

Once chill has been met, trees enter ecodormancy. During this time trees are not able to re-acclimate to cold temperatures. As you put it they pretty much just maintain their level of awakedness.

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Last week I felt pretty optimistic that I would get a good crop this year on my fruit trees. The weather had been pretty cold and the NWS extended and long range forecast was calling for normal to below normal temps. Looking at the 2 week forecast now it is pretty much all above normal … my optimism is quickly fading.

In other words, once the pump starts in the spring it goes until something kills it. It doesn’t stop when it gets cold, it just slows.

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65 degrees is pretty warm for this time of year. I’m very concerned about the fruit crop. Seeing some pear bud swell already. The plums are showing signs of swelling. .

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Yep, lots of my potted figs and apricots wanted to budded out and bloom even though they are in a very dark and unheated tornado shelter. Upper 50s again today.

Tony

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There are probably other charts likes this on the forum,but here is another,during the waiting period,before the warmth settles in.This is from Utah State. Brady
Critical Temperatures For Frost Damage on Fruit Trees

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It’s way too early to tell yet, but all three of my plum trees have finished blooming and are making little plumletts. It’s way too soon to know if they were really appropriately pollinated, but this is the best any of my plums looked at this stage of development since 2015. However, I worry about Thursday night (March 8th). They are forecasting 33. That would be OK, but I’ve seen forecasts for 33 four days out turn into 23 the night of. If we get past this cold snap, I think it will be free sailing in the temperature department down here in SE Georgia. God bless.

Marcus

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Flordaking peach was my last tree to leaf, but I’m not sure about blooms.I’d expect to see blooms the same time the tree starts to leaf. Don’t see them on this one or my other peach/nectarine that I started from seed…

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Blooms should come before the leaves. Hopefully the flower buds are alive.

Wasn’t sure if that was the case…with my apples they mostly keep their leaves all year so I really wouldn’t be able to tell…I went back and looked at some pictures of my pears early on and they were blooming before the leaves started to push…this is my first experience with stone fruit, so hopefully I’ll get some blooms.If not that seedling peach/nectarine will have to come out.

It doesn’t have to come out…graft her up…

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Good call…I had been looking for some low chill peach scions but didn’t get any bites…maybe next year.

Typically leafs before blooms indicate that chill hours did not get met. Flordaking is pretty low chill so could also be immaturity. Perhaps next year I will have some scions to share-i have many low chill peaches.

Yes, the flordaking is pretty immature, but the other tree(grown from seed and unknown variety) has been in the ground for going on it’s 3rd year so I would have expected some blossoms by now. it’s possible the variety I got wasn’t low chill…

kieffer pear, this was the tree I almost lost to FB a year ago…

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