Its just from a store bought fruit. I think its 5-7 years old? I don’t remember. Its pretty scarce bloom, probably because of its age.
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The weather looked bad though there is fruit to throw at the moon. Apples,pears,peaches,cherries,plums are abundant. We never know how things will turn out.
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It got my my peach pretty bad, but there are some fruit growing and I sure don’t have to thin the darn things. I suppose it was the lights that saved some. I really never thought about using c9 lights until reading it here. The only thing that is disappointing is it seems to save several fruit all closely spaced around each light
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Did you use them in conjunction with a cover, or just the lights?
I used the c9’s and a light bulb, some nights I used a cover and some I took my tarp and used it on the pear tree. Not a very scientific approach so I can’t really draw any conclusions. I had multiple nights of frost with varying lows.
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Last year I enjoyed the best crop since I began growing fruit in the northeast a quarter century ago. This year will be the worst. There is still some hope for a few things to produce well but such hopes are being dashed piece by piece.
It is a strange coincidence to experience such a complete reversal of fortune.
I am going to have a great vegetable garden this year!
Sorry to hear about your fruit Alan. 2 years ago we had a great crop but last year was lighter than normal. Hope your vegetables make up for it! We can a lot of fruit to counter those bad years.
Gosh, Alan, I’m very sorry to hear! I had a terrible stone/pome fruit crop last year due to almost zero chill hours and terrible, terrible prolonged summer heat combined with water conservation. This year I will have the best crop I’ve ever had. Next year will probably end up being like 2015, since we have an official La Nina coming our way next fall 
Thanks for the sympathy. In the grand scheme (that is MY grand scheme) of things this is just a bump in the road and in a few more months I’ll be thinking about next season.
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It sure seems to work that way. Fruit wiped out, cool season vegetables flourish.
Of course it’s not equal when you make your livelihood from one or the other.
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Many of the small fruitlets dropped from lack of pollination on the apricots and pears since nothing was flying during bloom. The apples, cherries, peaches, and some of the plums were pollinated by my honeybees and got a good fruit set. It was all about timing. Not a lot of insects flying this year. Indirectly the strange weather did get a lot of my fruit. The good news I got out of thinning a lot of pears. It’s unlikely I would have had time to thin them all had they not a pollination problem. The up side is I caught two more swarms of bees this year so perhaps pollination will be better next year and hopefully my trees don’t bloom when it’s below 50 F again.
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Only my late blooming apples have a high percentage of healthy flowers. Strange, I was in the Bermuda Triangle this year as far as disaster from a late very hard freeze. 30 miles further north, the trees were just barely starting growth and flower buds weren’t hurt, 30 miles south it didn’t get quite cold enough- a matter of probably 2 degrees.
A winter low of -12 wiped out peaches from 15 miles south of me on north as far as peaches are grown (besides lake areas). A degree or 2 warmer and the buds would have survived it.
Your area typically does not have those problems. In Kansas we expect some of this. Hope the crop you get is a good one. The pears here will be bigger this year than normal it looks like.
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I have noticed the same thing inferring from other posts - some people right north and south of me got nailed but I was mostly OK.
The bees, except for the bumbles, haven’t been flying most of this week, right while the pome fruits, cherries and Euro plums are in full bloom. They’re holding on, waiting for pollinators, but I don’t know how long the pollen will last.
Another cold snap two days ago. Now the Mirabelle de Metz is in full bloom along with the small Bavay and one Mirabelle de Nancy. Next will be my combo pear (first time!), then the Italian Plum, next sour cherry and last the apples. A few peaches are still hanging in here. Not many. This spring has been miserably cold.
Fruit set is about more than the original vitality of the buds and adequate pollination. Excessively cool weather reduces the trees ability to hold pollinated fruitlets. Warm sunny days AFTER bloom can be as important as those during bloom because it provides the tree with conditions conducive to productive photosynthesis.
Here I’m speaking about pomes and E. plums. Peaches that flowered fully almost always carry more than an adequate crop going into summer as long as hard frost doesn’t knock it off. The same may be true of J. plums.
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My pears have a good crop but not excellent. Like I said a lot of the fruit did not set properly due to the cold weather and pollination most likely.
The ones that got snowed on look great which is strange.
Alan:
My understanding regarding chemical thinning of apples is that cool sunny weather makes the apples harder to thin by reducing carbohydrate demand while maintaining high photosynthesis. Warm cloudy weather has the opposite effect, high demand from rapidly growing fruit and reduced carbohydrates in the tree from lower photosynthesis. This is what I’ve read in GFGM for WA state orchards.
But then my memory isn’t what it used to be.
I think I see frost rings on those pears.
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