I lost a Blushingstar peach. It has been sickly for some years. I also lost another peach tree. It was a mislabeled peach. It was supposed a white peach but ended up yellow. So, it is an unknown variety.
That tree survived a big windstorm 3 years ago and a got a big spiral corkscrew split in it. Also, a big branch broke off.
Unless lucky, you are never done planting trees! I trashed all my old deer protection gear (Fencing, T posts and rabbit guards) thinking I was done a few years ago. I had to buy it all back! I had not counted on losing a dozen trees over the years.
I won’t know about winter 2024-2025 until April, but last year, I had 3 young peach trees that didn’t make it through their first winter.
One was a graft failure (the rootstock grew but above the graft never woke up), one had failure to thrive (super slow to do anything then barely grew a single leaf then just blah), third one no idea…
i didn’t lose any in ground subtropical trees that i protected/wrapped up this past winter - citruses, bananas (two of which have racks), avocados, white sapote, lemon guava, cherry of the rio grande, pitangatuba and pitanga jambo all survived, coldest was in January we had 6 consecutive nights of deep freezes (stayed in the 20s F), with the coldest being 15F with snow (around 6 inches). i had several trees defoliate to varying degrees, so i had some slight to moderate damage. i didn’t protect my natal plums but decided to get rid of them even though the roots and lower thirds were alive. by the way, i had one cherry of the rio grande that was unprotected because it had been experiencing die-off the past year so i let it be, most of the leaves turned brown but the main trunk and thicker stems were all green underneath, so i’d say it is pretty hardy, it can tolerate more than 15F.
I did lose a gooseberry that was bought on clearance and planted too late last year, but I’ve got plenty of stuff on the way to replace it plus some. I got two pears and a peach planted in the fall I’m optimistic about them but haven’t seen any growth yet this year.
i was pruning my two fig trees, which were never protected this past winter and the brown turkey was fine but the hollier is dead above the ground but it is growing new stems/leaves from the roots. i really did not expect the above ground portion to die, the coldest was 15F and it’s supposed to be hardy to at least 5F. the trunk is about 2 inches thick and did well last winter but the coldest last winter was about 20F. i guess it will come back in bush form.
I’ll likely find out in a month or more. There is still 3ft of snow in the yard. I planted over 1000 trees last year (maybe 50 fruiting), so I am crossing my fingers regarding winter kill and wildlife browsing.
