Weather has been very warm but we have exceeded the required chill hours so Peaches are starting to bloom and Blueberries are close.
Should reach 80 today but expect 23 next Saturday with high winds.
We often see this same weather pattern but 23 is just a little too low for comfort
Also learned not to worry about damage based on published pictures that predict damage at various temperatures of various crops. We normally experience less damage than the pictures would suggest and hope to do so this year.
First year with my son running the farm so It would be a bad time to loose all the fruit!
Anybody else looking a big frost/freeze with fruit in bloom?
Cautiously optimistic that my peaches and apricots are in an early enough stage that they should pull through. I do find that I can usually go a couple degrees colder than even charts like this suggest without too much damage.
Last year my peaches were in full bloom and came through 25° with a decent crop set, until the cicadas did their thing.
Last year it dipped down to 27F here for a few hours overnight while my peaches were in full bloom and I still got a ton of peaches. The same night took out all of my strawberry blooms.
Luckily everything is still well dormant. Zone 7 has crazy weather at times, good luck, and as mentioned the trees can take some punishment. I’m at least a month away from the first bloom on anything, 6-7 weeks even 8 weeks away from all blooming.
South Georgia temps are our normal for March , looking like Powerball numbers. Hard freeze, or heat wave, flood, or drought ; your guess is as good as anyone’s.
Good luck and good growing to all.
Accuweather is predicting a high of 37F on Saturday and a low of 12… Hopefully nothing is far enough along to be hurt, much… Not a lot of movement on apple/cherry/plum yet but I do see a bit of pink peeking through on a few peach trees.
Almonds are in full bloom. Nectarine and Elberta peach is about half bloom. Gold plum is about 75%. Pears and the rest of my peaches, American plums, should be OK. Will try sprinklers on the nectarine and plum and peach. Don’t know if I’ll be wasting my time with over 5 hours at 20f. Sprinklers will probably freeze up at that temp.
It is supposed to snow all week this week here. We had a warm week last week and likely a warm week next week so our some plants are coming out of dormancy.
Praying my pawpaws remain closed until this deep freeze passes.
Hope the strange re-warmup on Thursday/Friday right before the plummet doesn’t tip the scales.
Should be taken with a grain of salt because weather models are not weather forecasts, but the trend over the last 4 model runs has been colder and colder for Appalachia & nearby areas, so be ready for the possibility of temperatures lower than currently forecast. This gif shows the same time period (night of the 12th) over the last four GFS model runs:
I had some odd blueberries bloom in December. Many have big buds.
Have half inch leaves on honeyberries.
Apples are fine so far.
17 to 19 expected here Sunday night.
That sounds bad. 16 to 19 latest forecast here Sunday night. Some blueberries probably lose crop. Honeyberries leaves probably get black at 16 to 18. Figs still in the house.
Good luck! I guess you could try covering up some of the branches to at least insulate them a little and protect them from any wind chill.