I created a cylinder that’s about 3’ wide (diameter) and about 5’ high with concrete remesh, I then wrapped it with R-13 insulation covered with bubble wrap insulation (I glued the R-13 to the bubble wrap before wrapping around the remesh), then used aluminum tape (the same type used with bubble wrap insulation around air ducts) to fasten the insulation material around the remesh. The top of the cylinder is similarly covered with the same insulation. Before covering the figs, I prune them and tie smaller branches to fit inside. I also put a bowl of moth balls under the cover to keep voles and mice away.
This design (which I learned from @jrd51 ) allowed my figs to withstand sub zero temperatures with minimal damage (I believe down to -8F).
Speaking for myself – I never vented. That seemed just a way to let warm air out / cold air in. And in ~10 years I never had mold damage except minor damage where there was prior damage to the tree (e.g., a messy pruning cut). IMO, mold is an opportunistic agent infecting dead organic tissue (killed in some other way, e.g., cold). I’ve removed covers in spring to find trees dripping wet from condensation with zero mold.
I have a friend who also lives in RI and also uses an insulated cover. He measures temp and humidity inside. With no venting, he has near 100% humidity, as expected. He has experienced no material mold damage.
I was just surveying my fruit set for the year since most things have finished blooming… That one freeze did even more damage than I had thought. My asian pears are basically non-existent, I had a huge bloom and now there is only a fruitlet here and there. The Euros are quite a bit better but still about half what I was expecting. For some reason the plums didn’t get too bothered, most of them have a full set. The apples also didn’t do so well, I had a great bloom and some things set well but many either set much less than normal or almost nothing. Apples usually don’t get bothered by frost at all, this is the first time I can remember.
With many fewer fruitlets the curc is also a bigger problem, more fruits are taking damage than usual since I have the same number of curcs but fewer fruits for them to prey on. I skipped spraying the apples until now due to high wind, but I wished I hadn’t because last night was a little too warm and I had quite a bit of damage just from that one night. The plums are relatively better because I sprayed them before the high wind hit.
It was a very unusual event, my guess is the length of time below freezing was much longer than any of the past events. Maybe there were some other factors as well such as wind etc.
Anyway, always look on the bright side, fewer trees to keep spraying from now on, and a lot less thinning to do
I also did a more extensive evaluation. Apples did so so. Asian pears are really thin. Euros set nice, but all something on the fruitlets. Plums set nice. Peaches nice. Apricots total loss. Cherry pretty thin. Almond total loss. And to finish the package a bunch of my potted plants died.
Sounds like you did worse than I did. I didn’t mention the cherries but mine have a nearly full set. The peaches did pretty well for me as well, maybe 3/4ths of the usual set.
Since my apricots were frozen out and the tree has no fruit to support it is growing faster than ever. It has probably already put on 3-4 feet of growth on all shoots and I hadn’t really cut it back hard enough during winter pruning. The net result is it is turning into a monster.
I’m thinking of giving it a really hard pruning now, probably toping it down a bit and cutting all new shoots back to a few inches to let them regrow. Is this something an apricot can take or am I endangering the tree?
I figured I’d ask here since many in the region may be in the same boat.
All my apricot sets went down in flames also. I fully intend to radically chop pretty soon myself. The tree will be fine. Here is an example. I grafted over a pretty big apricot this year to almond, leaving only one branch as a nurse. The grafts are growing and the tree shows no effects at all. They grow so fast that every 2-3 years I come through and chop the height to ladder picking height and bring the branches way back or remove entirely.
If you remove 20% of the tree it should still be fine. I would just wait till the weatherman forecasts 4-5 dry days, so that you minimize the chances of bacterial canker infection.
My apricots always grow like crazy fruit or no, and they get pruned back to where they were every winter. It certainly would not hurt to prune now, but its also OK to wait and just remove a ton this winter.
Thanks for the advice on the apricot my regional friends. I think I’ll prune it hard on Friday before we have a bunch of days coming up that should be dry. Then I’ll probably prune it pretty hard again in winter just to try to get it back under control. Even though the freeze took out the fruit, I had realized before that I wasn’t really able to get a good spray of surround on the fruit since so many were too high up.
Along the same lines of this topic and pruning, I planted a lot of bare root trees in March from ACN. A lot of the new growth on those trees is in the first foot or two above the ground. Do we think it is safe to prune them (cherries, pears, peaches, nectarines) now, or do I have to wait until mid-summer?
hehe. I am still at 2 sprays of myclobutanil (Immunox) mostly because of Ashmeads and Goldrush 2.0. Ashmeads does not give too many apples but I quite like the ones that it gives.
