For those of you who grow a lot of Pear like @clarkinks or peach @Olpea and others of you who may have some suggestions, what are your latest blooming Pear or Peach that often escape late frost when many others get damaged?
In our midwest climate, late frosts are common, so I want to put some effort into adding some late bloom cultivars next season perhaps.
Thanks!
Paul
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Harrow sweet is a very late bloomer.
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We had a terribly late freeze this winter. Most varieties were blank, or nearly so.
Some varieties had a good amount of fruit. Veteran was the best. I currently just have one of those trees in production. But it required very heavy thinning. It wasn’t affected by the freeze at all. Risingstar, Garnet Beauty, and Early Redhaven did well. Harrow Diamond and Earlystar did OK. Baby Crawford, Clayton, PF9a, and Madison also did pretty good. We picked a fair amount off Glenglo, but the those trees were light. Those were the most productive trees this year. Lots and lots of other varieties were blank.
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Thank you both so much for the helpful hints!
@Olpea nice list! Do you have Reliance for comparrison?
I grew Reliance once and gave one tree to my mother. I wasn’t super satisfied with the quality of Reliance, so I pulled it out. My mother moved, so I can no longer compare her tree either.
Just a note too, here when our freeze hit, all the varieties had bloomed out. So later blooming varieties didn’t really offer much. There were a very few blooms left on TangOs 1, when the freeze hit (because TangOs blooms over a very long period) but everything else was past petal fall. Based upon my best estimations, it got down to 26 or 27F that morning. So later blooms didn’t save the peaches. It was the freeze tolerance of the varieties themselves which determined whether or not they had any crop of peaches.
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That is so interesting!! Sounds like you are doing some great testing. My Reliance blooms did not make it this year and it has not proven very deoendable so far. If you see anything on my list come Feb I would sure be interested in scion of your successful varieties!
Thank you for the valueable info!
Our midwest climate is something else!
I am hoping my Javids iranian amond proves somewhat successful but time will tell!
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Have you planted any of the suggested varieties? If so, how are they doing for you?
I’ve learned that it’s not entirely correlated to late bloom. Some cultivars seem to accommodate minor frostings during bloom. Whether it’s a circumstance where a 3% survival rate of the blooms is enough, or some kind of resiliency built into the flowers, I don’t know.
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