Well that’s what worries me. For us, our forecast two weeks ago was a low of 19, which ended up at 17, but nothing was really advanced yet at that point.
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The “so called” round smudge pots (i.e. Toledo Torch) don’t put off much heat. They have a wick which burns the oil. It more or less acts like a big candle.
The double burner smudge pots get red hot.
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Now it seems to have drifted lower to 24 or even 20 on one forecast. I was worried about my peach and apricot, but at those temps, my pears are all getting close to open, I guess what the charts show as full white, which looks like they could be toast. It will be exciting to read the thermostat every morning!
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Do you have copper on them? Hoping you get some wind blowing you in a warm southern breeze tonight.
Good suggestion, but no copper on yet and none on hand. I may check Home Depot tomorrow and see if they have anything that might work. Looks like the coldest will come Monday night into Tuesday AM, so I have a little time to sweat it out. I had been planning to graft over a lot of my Euro pears to Asian varieties and I was getting cold feet about my decision knowing I’d be pruning off a lot of flowers to graft, so I may just take whatever happens as fate.
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I’ll spray copper tomorrow at your recommendation @clarkinks .
Found 6 strands of old Xmas lights and bought a pick tarp. Going to try and tarp my plum tree with the Christmas lights inside it. I think I can wrap the apricot with some lights and a smaller tarp. The peach tree will either get the fire pit or the grill, it’s too big to cover.
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Copper works best if applied a few days or a week before. Anything to gain a degree or two helps sometimes.
Here in Vermont it’s sugaring season and most of the sap is collected in sap lines, not buckets. The plastic lines can run for hundreds of yards, going from tree to tree. Many leave the lines up all year. Which put this thought in my mind. One could run similar small diameter tubing through the branches of a tree and run both ends into a reservoir on the ground, such as a plastic cooler. Put an aquarium pump and an aquarium heater in the cooler, fill the cooler with water, plug it in, and let it go. More trouble than lights, I know, but if the tube stayed in the tree it would be ready to go anytime. Christmas lights are now mostly LED’s so I don’t think they put out much heat.
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One note on the copper. Be very cautious using it close to bloom. Copper is by nature phytotoxic. For an ice nucleation inhibitor, it needs to go down before blooms open, or you will burn the inside reproductive parts of the flower.
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@zendog The Asians in general have more blight problems than Euros from what I read and experience. My search came down to Korean Giant and Shinko, and I don’t like the taste of Shinko, so only KG met my criteria. So my pears remain 95% Euro.
Blustery and 40 degrees. Wind blowing about 20 miles an hour and snow coming down at a pretty good clip but only off and on.
Expecting 29, 22, and 21 as the next three lows. I’m usually a couple degrees lower.
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Here in Cincinnati. Oh predicted to get 28F 22F 27F 43F.
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How advanced are your plants?
Tonight 25, tomorro night 23…says a couple online forecasts.
Figs inside…other stuff is tough or dies.
Got the plum and apricot wrapped with some Xmas lights and a tarp over the apricot. Hope it doesn’t blow the whole tree away!
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Unfortunately my trees are more than 100 feet from the house, and I’ve never seen more than a 100 foot extension cord. So unfortunately there really is no fathomable electrical solution.
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I’m reduced to sheets, frost tarps, fire pits, coal pots, smudge pots, and propane burners. Basically p—ing in the wind.
Que sera sera.
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27 here at 1am, so we’ve already reached the forecast low, which for us is usually a miss on the high end. So, applying that to tomorrow night’s forecast of 22 could mean upper teens here. Mon night’s low is supposed to be around 28.
Some of my peaches have small blooms, anything below 20 would probably be bad. But three nights in a row at 25 or below would be devastating.
Normally I’d be down about this, but after getting nothing for the last 2 years, it’s more of being just numb to it.
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Probably a little above the forecast here for Sat. nite.
Sunday night is going to be the killer.
There goes the balance of the Asian pear blooms probably.
(It’ll also blacken the Bradfords, and cut their spreading in the roadsides.)
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