My Apricot flower petals have almost all gone. Asian pear, sweet cherry, plum , are blooming, peaches start to bloom. The weather forecasted there will be few days that night temperature drop down to 29. Will this temperature hurt crops? What should I do to protect the fruitlets?
29 is no problem. If it starts getting much below that look here
https://growingfruit.org/uploads/short-url/rabF4F9soSgdqkXjApY69cLRuFe.pdf
Scott, Thanks. This will save me from more pain and aches.
A little off topic but if a tree sends out blooms during its first year will it really matter if the temps freeze during bloom? My first year cherry has blossoms on it but I don’t intend to let the fruit mature. I was going to pull anything that didn’t abort itself. No harm will come to the tree other than the blossoms being frozen?
Same boat here… Starting probably Thurs morning through Sun morning…20Fs are possible. The GFS actually hints at mid 20Fs later in the week… not fun.
That is a freakin’ super great link Scott. I’ll keep that in my favs since it’s that time of year when I start worrying about this stuff. Any day now.
You might want to read the Peach Freeze Protection thread. Many of us south of you dealt with this last month and learned the hard way about some things that help, some that don’t, and some that make matters worse.
Good luck to all of you facing this go round. I hope your trees wind up damage free.
Worried about tonight. Forecast is for 27f. 25% of plum and nectarine flowers are open. One degree lower bad and one degree higher they may be ok.
When I click on this link, I get a page saying this domain name is for sale.
It’s ten years old is why. Look at the picture above.
My forecast was for 32F last night.
We had a low of 35F this morning… 36F before sunup… just before and after sunup 35F.
No sign of frost on grass.
We seem to be squeaking by this year.
TNHunter
It dropped to 21F for couple hours early morning today, ouch! Forecast
was 25F.
The little hut I made around my apricot tree with frost protection fabric didn’t help much - it still got down to 21°F inside. But once the sun came up, it warmed up quickly: 30°F inside while it was 25°F outside.
Here is the full chart @scottfsmith posted earlier if anyone wants it.
IllustratedSpringFrostDamageThresholds.pdf (355.3 KB)
*earlier meaning ten years ago, ha.
Got lucky. Forecast was for 27f but it only got to 30f. Flowers look ok. Rest of the week looks ok.
I cut open an Apricot flowers, it’s still green inside. I am hoping
I’ve been meaning to try this with apricots while also putting a sealed 5 gallon container of hot water in it, hoping to raise the temp inside just a bit.
Thanks I edited the link at the top to make it that link. People seem to be finding this really old thread again.
I had a low of 29F, and below freezing for five hours last night which is a very long time. It looks like I lost some of the apricots and fried about 95% of the kiwi shoots. Usually I get very little damage at 29 but it shows the length of time is also key.
First time I’ve seen that infographic and it’s awesome.