oh, rats! i’m totally screwed. it is supposed to go down to 12 degrees next wedensday,
i’won;t be able to wrap all my trees by then.
some will be top killed for sure.
this is not supposed to happen in november.
my trees haven’t even lost their leaves.
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I brought my potted CH in the house yesterday , they have lost all of their leaves and are dormant
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A sudden cold snap can be really bad. @susieqz, if you can’t protect the whole tree in time you can still bend flexible suckers down to the ground and pin down/cover with whatever you can find so at least you will still get a small main crop early.
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thanks, guys.
they have changed the forecast. snow, but temps in the 20s.
i’m out there getting them ready…
the problem is it takes days to get huge branches into a column.
my dominick has 2 trunks, at ground leval, they are as thick as my thigh,
yo bend the upper limbs, i use a truck ratchey,
but they bend just a bit. then i have to wait a day til the wood relaxes so i can bend it more,
i guess i need more than one ratchet. i have 2 large trees,
both the HC n the dom were over 7’ tall n 7’ wide before i trimed them.
the 2 n 3 year olds are easuer but the big ones are most impertant,
they gave me 400 figs this year n might give me 1000 next year,
i want that bad.
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oh, my best trees are all mount etnas,
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There are 2 ways you can look at me covering my figs last minute like this
Going to cost me some figs next year by not covering the entire bush
It’s going to gain me some figs covering that much of the bush
An orchardist makes tough decisions but it’s always got to be about producing fruit.
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do you suppose just tossing a movers blanket over a tree will do anything if if temps drop to 12 degrees?
that’s all i can do for some of my best trees.
this never happens in november, any more than the 6’’ of snow on the ground.
My first year CH has been through mild freezes and finally upper 20’s few days ago damaged the leaves. Leaves are still on the tree. I’ve been waiting for it to lose the leaves on its own before I wrap it up for winter. Forecast says 22 degrees on Thursday. Will it be ok at that unwrapped? Tree wasn’t all that hardened off. It was growing until end of October I think. I don’t want to wrap it until it looses leaves and until things dry out for a day or two.
Where are you seeing that forecast? On wunderground.com the forecast was 24 but is now 29, and it looks like there will be clouds for sure. A few days ago the forecast was 29 for 2 nights in a row but the wind dropped and the clouds lifted so there was a radiational freeze down to 23 and 24 each night, I thought 29 would be fine to start them into dormancy and didn’t fix the row cover that had blown off… It will be a day or 2 more before the damage shows completely, but so far it looks much better than last year when the temperature was closer to 15 (I said it was just below 20 then based on wunderground but later heard a thermometer in the valley where my trees are read 14). Soft green tips are killed this time but the buds just a foot or so down that I checked are still bleeding latex, no sign of sap leaking from the trunks as was the case last year which I posted about here Cold hardy figs - #491 by hoosierbanana.
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susu, i don’t know about that young tree. you may want to throw something over it.
i can tell you that older trees that are hardened off can take 17 with no damage.
until this year, that’s as cold as it got before i wrapped mine.
fully wrapped, mine have survived two nights of -1 with only 10% damage.
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Accuweather still says 24.
After reading the scientific forecaster discussion on wunderground I’m a little nervous now, they are saying no clouds, the 10 day graph shows 60% increasing to 100% by dawn… Accuweather also says 29 here though. Won’t have time to cover all of them but I should be able to do a few rows tomorrow. As long as it doesn’t go below 23 things should not get any worse. I would cover your tree temporarily to be safe, soft green growth on trees that are still in leaf gets damaged at around 27.
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you guys need to harden off your trees earlier.
even first year trees that are hardened off should laugh at those temps.
The past 2 years have been abnormal Susie, I dissect branches throughout the winter so I can tie specific events to damage rather than wait until spring and guess about what caused the damage.
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The heavy rains this year in the northeast kept the figs growing later into the season. I pinched the tops off at the end of August or beginning of September to arrest growth, and some still kept forming new shoots. Most hardened off but a few green branches will die for sure.
I did not know there was anything I could do to “harden off” my figs. I read that stripping leaves does not induce dormancy and is pointless. What actually works?
ham, first you eliminate fertilizrer, then you deprive the plant of wateer.
when i stop irrigating for 2 weeks in october, the plants sleep.
hoosier, do you mean trimming branches?
how soon after death does the green disappear?
my unwrapped trees just expertenced 13 degrees. before i wrap dead wood, i need to know how to to tell what is dead.
the scratch test works in spring but what about now?
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