I’m going to lose a lot of fruit on my frankentree to hail, it appears. I got good bloom, excellent pollination, thinned 90%, and then got a nasty hail storm. Went back and thinned another 50% of what was left, including many dinged fruit, and would be really happy with the crop if I weren’t seeing so many scars turning into rot. Honestly, I don’t see how professional farmers survive year after year. It’s a tough business.
I think I’m beating most of the codling moth back with spinosad, I don’t yet have plum curculio or spotted wing drosophila, and I’ve been able to avoid cedar apple rust and fireblight in any significant amount with sprays, so I have a lot to be thankful for. But oh, dear, I am glad I don’t have to pay the bills with my fruit production!
Sorry to hear of your plight!! My experience is the apples don’t rot as much as I’d expect. At least here where it’s pretty dry they can make eatable fruit even with big dings.
I’m hoping so! I’ve often found that it’s worth your time to cut onto a spot instead of just assuming the worst. I was surprised, for example, that when using Spinosad codling moth stings often looked terrible on the surface but turned out to be very minor.
I hope you did not have too much damage. Hail can be so hard on crops, I saw some corn fields in western Kansas once that had been reduced to stubble only four inches high by hail. I can’t imagine the size and amount of hail it would take to do that.
Mark hope you still get apples and other fruit from your Frankentree. I don’t think of hail as happening in Montana, I grew up will golf ball sized hail in Ohio. Shows you that I know very little about weather. I really feel for you, as these trees of ours take much attention and we walk around them daily! Maybe some fruit will survive, fingers crossed. The only thing that keeps my coddling moth at bay is triazicide. I also had my first curcs this year! They will find you.
This was an interesting hail storm. The stones were not golf-ball size, thank heavens, but more like cherries. But there were so many of them, and the storm moved towards us in a perfect front. I was outside and it was pretty still; I heard what sounded like a train, or a distant jet, but it wasn’t. It was the roar of the hail and as it got closer I figured it out and ducked into the house and crossed my fingers! I’d never heard “hail roar” before, but it turns out it gets some attention. I googled it and Youtube had a bunch of samples. Pretty neat, but not all that good for crops, roofs, cars …
I think I’ll get at least a fair amount of useable fruit, although not the bumper crop that I thought I was getting. Oh, well.
Hail- it’s one of those things you ought to avoid if you can!