I think my apples ought to be okay for now, except my Zestar, its buds are partially open, but still green. My Macoun is loaded with fruit buds, really hope we get some of those this year. Zestar is full up too.
Think my Goldrush is on its way out, it has several darkened branches, and those failed the scratch test. Good thing I planted a newer one last week.
Some peach buds have bloomed, but most not, but there doesn’t seem to be as many buds on my trees this year.
Of course you are right. I think I stress about the first freeze event the most, and then i come to terms with it.
Itiswhatitis @subdood_ky_z6b
Anything above 24 is usually not seriously lethal IME.
Absolutely. Do you work with stats for a living?
Not much these days, unfortunately. I did dive into them much more than most in grad school, but I don’t get a chance to use them very often. So, I resort to ranting discussing the nuances on the internet.
Hey @BG1977 @dpps @PharmerDrewee @growjimgrow @zendog etc how did things work out for you from this March 29th freeze? I saw almost no damage right afterwards. Now is when you can finally tell though. I was out surveying yesterday and it looks like my apricots got nicely thinned (very little thinning will be needed, I have about a 1/3 crop), the hybrid plums are fully loaded, and the pure Asian plums are a mix … Satsuma Laroda and Howard Miracle are like the apricots, 1/3 of a crop. Weeping Santa Rosa has very few plums whereas it usually sets very well and very consistently year to year. Everything else appears to have taken no damage at all, Euro plums cherries and pears all OK. It was too early to matter for the apples.
Since I took 21F this is not a bad result all in all. But it is a good reminder that you need to wait to really know what the damage is, everything looked 100% until recently.
I am in a cold zone. During that time, we got low temp of 21, 17 and 23 in a row.
Apricots 90% + esp. Orange red and Florilege got wiped out. Their flower buds turned black and gradually fell off. Other fruit trees have seemed to avoid severe damage.
My peaches look mostly fine, except Glenglo which was a total loss, but Ernie’s Choice has a decent set as does PF-25. It was a natural thinning for those two, but I still have a lot.
On the other hand, I have one, count them one, Tomcot apricot.
My stone fruits are only 2 years old (planted in spring 2020), so it’s hard for me to know whether the fruitless ones are all freeze-related, or what is just due to the trees being young.
My Hollywood plum, surprisingly, has no fruitlets now. It was only starting to blossom when the freeze hit, and the majority of blossoms hit full bloom a few days later, but alas, no fruit. But it has never fruited yet, so I dunno if it’s due to the freeze?
My summer delight aprium, surprisingly, has three fruitlets right now! This makes me super happy cause I was convinced there would be none! It was fully fully blooming right when the freeze hit, and the blossoms all got brown and fell off after. I thought they were toast. I don’t know what happened, but there are three fruitlets and I am so so excited. Any advice on how to baby them and protect then so I might taste them?
My Saturn peach was still pink buds when the freeze hit. It bloomed normally maybe a week or two after, and right now it looks like it will be loaded. I feel very fortunate with this tree cause I recieved it mistakenly (I had ordered something else), but it it so precocious it had fruits last year and they were super delicious. (I know I shouldn’t have let it fruit at year one, but I didn’t know what I had recieved, so I wanted to taste it to see if it would be a keeper)
All of my other fruits seem to be doing just fine so far. Paw paws, currants, honey berries, goose berries, black berries, Romeo cherries, issai kiwis, all seem to be ok. My mystery Bronxville figs were left unprotected, and I can see some little leaves and figlets already! My CH fig and IE mulberry hven’t leafed out yet, but the tips/buds are green and swelling on both, so 
As my fruit trees are more a source of mental health rather than necessary for keeping my family fed (thank goodness), I am starting to consider trying to do more in pots so I can pull them back into the garage after they’ve bloomed but while Ohio does the Ohio thing. The forecast for Wednesday night has been dropping every day and as of now it is forecasted to be 28. I expect it to get lower by then. Last year I spent days building a solid tarp structure that wouldn’t blow away or break my fully bloomed black gold cherry tree but I don’t think I have it in me to do that every year.
I only started getting into fruit trees this last decade. Has it always been so common for late frosts? I thought I’d chosen well within my zone but it seems like the planning hasn’t mattered. Everything wakes up and gets going just in time to take the hit. Was it this fickle before?
I’ve been around a lot of years gardening in Kentucky and some in NC and FL. So, not many things happen that haven’t happened before…if you have enough years under your belt.
1987 (or maybe 89…memory is beginning to fade) no apple crop in Kentucky period. 2020 no apple crop in Kentucky. (So anyone not old enough to remember 1987 might very likely think 2020 a real anomaly.)
It snowed 2" at the Kentucky Derby in 1991…so if it did that 13 days from now, I’d not think of it as too weird. Been there, done that.
I have seen about 10 Tomcots left on the tree and 1 OrangeRed (which is in its second year with only a few flowers). The Methley tree, which I was most worried about, definitely lost whatever flowers were in bloom, but all the flowers that hadn’t opened when the cold spell came seem fine and there are plenty of tiny plums. The Shiro graft and the Bubblegum plum also seem to be unaffected. It seems most of the damage came from the tarp that covered the tree being blown around and breaking smaller branches, so not sure how much tarping the tree really helped. All the peaches seem fine, maybe 10% less in my full grown tree. There are definitely less Nanking Cherries, which were fully open when that cold came through. Seems no damage to the pears and apples, which are blossoming now. Unfortunately, the first round of strawberry flowers to open are duds with brown centers.
I think my buds must have been not as far along as @mamuang . I had no damage to my peach buds or to the 3 flower buds that were at all swelling on my apricot. Apparently, those were the only 3 flower buds either of my apricots decided to set this year. I thought for sure this would be the year I got to try a few, but no such luck.
I can tell the difference on mine of which I covered and which I didn’t. I found over several years that cinching the cover up firmly is important. A flapping tarp or cover wreaks havoc on the tree. I have broken a graft or two in the past. I try to regraft it as soon as I notice and it seems to do ok. Sometimes I sacrifice a large branch by leaving it outside the cover. If I have light fruiting I might just cover a few key branches and that has also worked. I have found using a tall stick helps me greatly when covering the tree to avoid knocking off or pulling off blooms. Covering in calm weather is SO much easier than waiting and fighting the wind. I have also double covered with sheets and I think that might work better than tarps that conduct cold where blooms touch. Just my experience. Yours may differ.
Interesting about the apples in KY. My recollection even from living next door in Ohio in my youth was that losing peaches was fairly common (1 year in 3 the crop would be little to none) but losing apples to freeze is a very rare occurrence. Although 1987 and 2020, i.e. two times in the last ~40 yrs, would qualify as rare.
Another observation. In the eastern half of the US, it seems those of us east of the Appalachians and 2 hrs or less from the coast have a slight protection advantage over freezes than a similar USDA zone west of the Appalachians. Maybe, anecdotally, about a 2-4 degree F advantage. We certainly deal with freeze events but it seems like the ones we hear about in TN, KY, and most of the Midwest are typically worse (when compared to how far along the trees are) than the ones we get. So I think the mountains and the water add a little protection. People actually ON the water get even more of an advantage, but even here in Howard County, MD (30 mi from the Bay and 120 mi from the Atlantic) get a little bit of a boost. The Appalachians do seem to blunt artic outbreaks a little even away from the coast (perhaps it’s as simple as the cold air doesn’t completely spill over the mountains).
I think you’re probably not that different than North Carolina.
The month of March most of NC (I don’t mean the high elevations) and most of Kentucky are about equal in temperature. Most months of the year it’s 3 to 7 degrees hotter in Carolina–once you’re east of the continental divide.
And in VA the “Northeasters” in spring force a wedge of cold air down the Shennandoah Valley or along the east of the mountains.
So, factor that into your formula…Raliegh NC or Statesville is going to have as rough a spring as Kentucky as regards frosts.
Yes, we have frequent freezes and I’m in a microclimate to boot where cold air settles. That puts me at least two or three degrees below predicted most of the time.
