This only goes out 60hrs…but this should be around the lowest Sunday morning…i’ll update again tomorrow.
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No…not at all bad if the 15 - 20% is fairly equally dispersed throughout the tree…Hell, I’d welcome that. Keep in mind also that there is still 2 days before the freeze hits, so they’ll be further advanced by then. I think we thinned right around 600 peaches off of 1 sickly Hale Haven last year…and still, I should have taken more.
I thinned the plums too, but the biggest tree (is very big) could have handled way more plums than I allowed.
I think the pears will have little to no damage and the apples will never know what they missed.
Haven’t looked at the cherries…I don’t know where they’re at. They usually break pretty early too.
Where is the legend? That light blue just cutting across western Maryland is just clipping me.
Ok nevermind…after enlarging it, I see it has us at 27, but just for Sunday night…right? I’ll be checking in for your update warm…thanks for the post it’s very useful.
Olpea, here are some instruction sheets that came with the KDL. The 1st paragraph of the letter mentions 3oz/gallon of KDL and household vinegar. Maybe this needs to be adjusted based on your water PH. I am going to try to find out my water PH today all call Larry the AGRO-K, the manufacturer rep to see what what he has to say.
KDL instructions.pdf (207.5 KB)
Average bloom here is probably about april 25th for stone fruit, average last frost date is in May and yet it’s a rare year when the peach crop gets frozen out.
I think of 25 degrees as the red-line, not 32. Yes, duration of freeze matters as does the exact stage of bloom or small fruit, but that gets pretty complicated. I’ve seen years when earlier blooming peaches did better than later ones after a late, hard frost and I’ve seen the opposite.
Of course, I sympathize with the concern. Spring is early here as well, and fruit growers don’t want early springs because of the inherent risk of freeze out, but don’t worry about temps in the upper mid 20’s and higher too much or you will be gray before your time. If you already are gray, you should know better.
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Yeah…enlarge it. It’s hard to read sometimes. I would just use it as a guide.
Forecast (from the NWS) here for this morning was 29F. So far the low has been 36F. The wind has stayed up and skies stayed overcast keeping the temps up.
@Appleseed70, I think we will be OK in Maryland. You are probably less advanced than I am and I only have one tree party blooming now and the cool weather already starting. I could take a 20F now and not lose much. My expected low is now 28F which won’t even get the blooms.
Mark,
I had a long discussion yesterday with Larry Schafer at Agripro and learned
a lot about KDL that I didn’t know before. It seems this product is still somewhat a work in process and the company is still compiling data on it’s usage. Larry told me a lot of things about how to use the product. If I had not have known these tips, I would have surely failed in it’s application. You should give him a call today at 800-328-2418. He told me he’d be in today.
Chris,
Perhaps because my KDL is older, it doesn’t come w/ many instructions (No mention of vinegar.)
I noticed the testimonial letter is obviously written by Bob Purvis. He’s everywhere whenever this discussion comes up, lol.
Ray,
I talked w/ Larry years ago, but will give him a call today. Thanks.
The vinegar is likely to lower pH of spray solution. Alkaline water reduces the half life of many chemicals in a spray solution. This assumes my old brain really remembers such things correctly.
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After a few minutes of research I found these tidbits about KDL:
KDL is derived from: Potassium Carbonate, Seaweed Extract (Ascophyllum nodosum)
Wikipedia indicates: (Ascophyllum)
Ascophyllum nodosum is harvested for use in alginates, fertilisers and for the manufacture of seaweed meal for animal and human consumption.[20] It has long been used as an organic and mainstream fertilizer for many varieties of crops due to its combination of both macronutrient, (e.g. N, P, K, Ca, Mg, S) and micronutrients (e.g. Mn, Cu, Fe, Zn, etc.). It also host to cytokinins, auxin-like gibberellins, betaines, mannitol, organic acids, polysaccharides, amino acids, and proteins which are all very beneficial and widely used in agriculture.[21]
Could it be that cytokinins (e.g. 6-benzylaminopurine [6-BA/6-BAP]) and gibberellins (e.g. GA4+GA7) are actually the active ingredients in KDL? This would be the same mechanism of action as Promalin.
Some controlled studies are underway: Updates on freeze injury in grapevines | Penn State Extension Wine & Grapes U.
Anyways my $0.02
They have always been the norm, actually. The current moment usually seems more dramatic/painful/ etc then similar events in your memory. Read about the Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940 and the White Hurricanes of 1913 and 1888. Seems like there was another storm named that in the 1700’s.
Remember, every city has 2 opportunities every day to set a record temp. When you look at it that way, records are rarely broken.
I would love to have a greenhouse for my fruit trees to help on years like this plus pest control
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Thanks so much warm. My peach buds are really swelling and my pears almost have a bit of green showing. So as long as I see 30 degrees I know I’ll be ok. It won’t last long. Thanks!
Levers,
Thanks so much for that link! They mention the same concern I have, “growers usually do not leave an ‘untreated’ control area where the material is not applied, which is critical in order to evaluate the
efficacy of KDL as cryo-protectant.”
It looks like Cornell and Penn State are evaluating this product. That’s exactly what I am trying to do. I would be very interested in looking at those results when the studies are completed.
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I have potted blackberries. They are starting to leaf out. So I had to drag them out of the workshop to get sunlight. Now the lows for the next few nights are forecast to be 25 degrees. The fruit buds don’t open until much later. But the leaves are tender. Do I need to protect these?
(I have other plants that I clearly need to protect. Just not sure I need to do all that work for the blackberries.)
Thanks.
I guess Larry at Agripro is a popular guy today, I let him know my city water PH is 6.8 and he suggested the standard ratio of 3 parts KDL and 1 part System Cal which I also purchased. Also said when I am spraying the peaches and plums Sunday for frost protection to spray the apple trees as well which will benefit from the dose of calcium.
I spoke w/ Larry today and he suggested a solution pH of 7 is ideal.
He also suggested lots of other products his company sells (for post frost protection, late fall foliar feeding, etc.) but I am unwilling to buy any other products till the claims on this product are demonstrated (with a decent degree of scientific validity) to achieve what the company claims.
for you commercial growers, is there some kind of insurance you can purchase on your crops for such events?
Yes Moley. There is a fairly new program called NAP. It’s designed for specialty crops like peaches, doesn’t pay very well, but better than nothing.
On the books, you get 60% of the value of the crop, but in reality it’s much less than that if you retail your crop.
87 here yesterday but two 32 degree days coming Monday/Tuesday. I don’t mind some freezing temperatures when my trees are in bloom. Its common here to have a very warm spell followed by one or more freeze events. In most years it OK, but it can be extreme enough to kill all the blooms. I lost 100% of my blueberries once in 20 years, and loosing the peaches 1/5 years is pretty normal. A good orchard site has a big impact on the outcome from the frost/freeze.
The good news is that most fruit trees as well as blueberries produce too many blooms. A moderate freeze actually helps thin the fruit and saves a lot of time devoted to manually thinning the fruit. I have been told that only 10% of the blooms on a peach tree will provide a full crop, but I’m not sure its completely true.
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