Thanks Scott. I’ll have to look at my Claytons today and see how far along they are compared to everything else. In fact, if I get time in the next few days, I’ll try to record what trees had good flower bud survival from the severe frosts in the last week.
I recorded that information from last years spring frosts and thought I posted it on the forum, but maybe I didn’t?
Clayton and Challenger seem to be the latest to bloom of my peach varieties, really paid off this year so far, they were the only ones not at full bloom when the cold blast hit a couple of days ago so looks like I will atleast have some early season peaches. Of the varieties that were at full bloom, Winblo seems to have most remaining live fruit buds.
Here’s one of Claytos, if I can get my phone to work. Not as far along, but farther than others.
Some of the flowers are clearly not going to be viable, but some of the tighter buds probably survived.
The frosted flowers can really fool you. I’ve got several trees full of floweres in which the flowers are open and look healthy, but if you tear the flowers open the ovary has a very tiny black spot running down the middle on the inside. Those ovary never fatten up and produce fruit.
While I’m at it, there was another thread, can’t remember which on, where there was some discussion about how white the blooms of Tangos II are. Here’s some blooms. As @fruitnut pointed out, there is a tiny tinge of pink, but mine are mostly white.
Wait a minute, that was a pic of Tangos. Tangos II has pinker flowers. I got it backwards.
I’d like to hear what else was less far along than Clayton so see if I have any of those. Location within an orchard is also a factor. My Ernies Choice for example is further along than the Clayton.
Oh, one thing I left off above was the Japanese plums… most of those are wiped out but Lavina is going to mostly survive, its similar to the earlier peaches. I have a few scattered Japanese plum blossoms here and there which may also come through. Anyway, yet another great thing about Lavina - great plum PLUS its very late blooming. I also noticed that blooms high up on Florilege apricot are looking good still, so I may get a few of those.
I never did get the time to go through the orchard and evaluate late bloomers like I wanted to. Now with the last couple days approaching 90F, everything is in full bloom. The exception is Gloria, which I noticed yesterday. It’s a very late blooming peach and its fruit buds seem to be pretty winter hardy, at least for winter temps here. The problem with Gloria though, is that it’s sub-acid, so I don’t like the flavor that much.
I’ll try to evaluate fruit set later. This was a unique year in that we had a lot of fruit bud loss from about -10F in Dec of last year, plus the two extreme frost events about a week ago (two nights of 18F). So, any trees with good fruit set, show productivity in both circumstances.
My entire stone fruit crop is a complete loss. I even sprayed KDL,
but it got down to 23 last wednesday and negated any protection
that KDL would afford. SC is the second largest peach producer, next
to California, and they’ve estimated a 90% state wide crop loss. Everything
here bloomed a full month earlier than normal, but there were no pollinators
out, because of the fluctuating weather, so very little got pollinated on top
of the blooms being wiped out. Also the Georgia blueberry crop is almost
a total loss. I’m glad I don’t do this for a living, but I’m sure going to miss
my peaches, nectarines, plums and pluots. Even my Pineapple pear, which
had already set fruit, is a complete loss.
I’ll guess I’ll be planting extra melons this year. Too bad you can’t freeze
them.
OMG, that’s terrible! I knew there was a cold blast in the SE, but hadn’t heard it was that bad. These early springs really suck!
The S.C. Department of Agriculture reports that the state probably lost 85 to 90 percent of its peach crop. The Midland and South Carolina is the largest peach-producing state on the East Coast, second only to California. Its peach crop usually is worth about $90 million, with a $300 million impact on local economies, including 1,500 jobs.
That would be the heaviest loss in 10 years, since a devastating late freeze in 2007.
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/living/food-drink/article139682158.html#storylink=cpy
I didn’t know that about the Georgia Blueberry crop. So sad. The frost got all of my Pink Lemonade blooms and about half to three-quarters of my Powder Blue (still produced some flowers after the frost) but my later blooming varieties (Ochlockonee and Centurion) had just started opening or hadn’t opened yet, so there were still more than plenty of blooms afterward.
But then I plant rabbiteyes (or in the case of Pink Lemonade, rabbiteye hybrids) for their hardiness and general “growability”. I suppose if most commercial producers in Georgia planted SHB, I can see where they might have been wiped out. But…if I may say, commercially planting SHB in all but the most southern areas of Georgia (Savannah and lower) is a foolish thing to do. Because of the changing weather–there have been enough frosts that aren’t technically “late” frosts as they are still within our last average frost date, but frosts in March after good, warm, sunny weather in February–that I, for one, would never bank my livelihood on growing early blooming crops in Georgia.
I dunno. I’m not saying in this case, or in any specific case, but just in general, I wonder at what point does crop failure due to “late” frost cease being a tragedy and start becoming stupidity? That the climate, for whatever reason, is changing, and that needs to be taken into account when planting commercially?
The cold blast was really pretty horrific here in the southeast. Beside crops and plants waking up several weeks early as Ray mentioned, having temps in the low 20’s for 2 consecutive nights really put a hurt on any trees/plants that were close to blooming. The center part of my azalea flowers is brown, I think the blast killed all my azalea, camellia, and hydrangea flower buds for this year. Looks like I lost at least half of my blueberry crop as well.
Have not heard but I’m wondering ff the will be any azalea blooms at the Master’s golf tournament this year.
I’m pretty sure they will be some. I’m not too far away from Augusta, and while we did get the freeze, it wasn’t quite as severe as other places–maybe 30 degrees or so. So everything in-bloom died, obviously, to include many of the azaleas. However, at some of the parks around here, I’m still seeing some azalea blossoms. Not sure if they are later blooming varieties, or if the freeze just affected flowers and not buds.
Augusta National is very conscientious about their plants and trees, and the history of them, and their traditions. I’m sure if there was any way to save them, or some of them, they spared no expense to do so.
I remember a few years ago, we had an ice storm that gave us about 3-4 inches of ice. So many trees died because the weight was just too much. I think AN was able to save most all of their trees, except for the Eisenhower tree which pretty much cracked in half. But they had tree experts flying in from all over, no expense spared.
So long-winded way of saying that if it was humanly possible to save some of the blossoms, AN did so…we probably won’t have the usual riot of colour, but I bet there will be some. For anyone could pull it off, they could.
Rayrose,
So sorry to hear of your loss. That’s a lot. Hope you do better with pomme fruit.
Scott, sitting here watering new trees (crazy thing to have to have to do in spring, but I think I’ve waited on the rain for so long I’ve lost some of my transplanted bud grafts, and about to lose some newly planted trees) Anyway Zard looks to be a late bloomer. Thanks for recommending it for me. I don’t know if it will produce anything salable, but at least it’s a cot that will produce something here.
Just wanted to show the difference in winter hardiness of fruit buds on K1 vs peach seed. Here is Harrow Diamond on peach seed Here is the same variety on k1, a year older. Maybe K1 would perform better if loaded with nitrogen? Nitrogen does increase fruit bud hardiness on peaches.
Btw, I mentioned earlier there was a Harrow Diamond on each side of the K1, but that detail’s not correct. The two Harrow Diamonds old enough to have good fruiting are right next to the one on K1, but not on either side.
It has to be nutrient related…maybe k1 just doesn’t like having a peach stuck to it.
I wonder what the fruit is like on K1?I have a root stock in a greenhouse,where the graft failed,but some of the stock’s branches are flowering quite a bit.Maybe I’ll try to hand pollinate them and see. Brady
Mine flowered last year…nothing set fruit. I’m not even sure the fruit is edible.
I removed 2 of them yesterday. I have 2 more that have stuff grafted…i may try to N them hardcore this summer and see if that helps. I have a little of everything on them so we’ll see if i see any differences in growth rates.
It appears that about 99 out of every 100 flower buds are dropping off my 4 peach trees. The buds never swelled up to the point of showing any color. Just dropping off at a plump dormant stage. Could this be winter damage? I did my major structural pruning after Thanksgiving, weeks before any cold nights and I left all of the fruiting wood alone. I’m glad I left all the small stuff because it looks like I’ll need it. We had a few low 20s over the winter then down to 19 - 20F when that cold blast hit Texas a couple weeks ago. So overall not very cold but maybe cold enough? Maybe my pruning made them more susceptible? Kind of weird because they still seemed dormant when that most recent cold hit. I hope I have enough undamaged buds to get a crop.
