Mine will likely bloom later than yours, but I can offer you some flowers/pollen when they do start blooming. Also, I can tell you the wild spots I know of if you want to try getting wild pollen, but those are all further north than where you live as well.
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Well the damage from that 15 degree day is starting to show. Looks like half of my plum buds at least were fried.
Peaches and pears look ok still.
Is half a good amount that you shouldn’t have to thin? Trying to be optimistic over here…
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My experience is similar. One of my plums (Superior) had many flower buds get fried, but there are still plenty left that weren’t damaged. Other trees don’t appear damaged, but I’m still keeping an eye on the pears.
@disc4tw Don’t worry, the plum curculios will thin them out for us!
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The full damage from that 15 degree day is finally apparent. 95-100% loss on the plums and 75% loss on all my peaches. The peaches actually looked ok but the flowers opened brown and dead inside this week.
Surprisingly the pears seem completely fine, I didn’t see a single lost flower.
Blackberries, grapes, strawberries, and blueberries all seem fine, they were further back and are just waking up now.
That sounds rough for the plums… A reminder that having lots of different fruits helps to have a harvest in challenging weather. Do you have any persimmon/ /pawpaw or jujube? All of mine are still asleep now with a few pawpaws just barely starting to leaf out. Good options for surviving late frost here.
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Public service announcement -
Forbes State Forest is hosting a “Spring 2022 Making the Most of Your Piece of Nature Workshop” (my wife and coworkers have been organizing it, I will be attending).
Details: Join us on May 14th at
Mammoth Park, Mt. Pleasant, PA
8:30 am-Noon
Spend a morning learning how you can care for your “Piece of Nature.” With the increased prevalence of development and urban sprawl, learn how you can transform your property into a refuge for native birds, pollinators, and wildlife that better serves you and your family. Experts will be on hand to inform and answer questions giving talks and exhibiting throughout the morning. This free event is made possible through the generous support of Westmoreland County Parks.
Agenda
8:30am: Registration and visiting exhibitors in pavilions 4 and 9
9:00am: Pavilion 3 “Native Plants that Thrive,” Melissa Reckner
Pavilion 10 “Climate Change in Your Backyard,” Bonnie McGill and Nicole Heller
10:00am: Pavilion 3 “Eat the Invasives: Spring Edition,” Barb McMillan
Pavilion 10 “Backyard Birding," Gigi Gerben
11:00am: Pavilion 3 “Permaculture Principles," Tacumba Turner
Pavilion 10 “Trees as an Investment,” Kalaia Tripeaux
12:00pm: Wrap-up
RSVP
The event is free, but please be sure to register.
Tree Adoption!
Thanks to the generous support of the Laurel Highlands CRSP network, free tree adoptions will be available for workshop attendees. Trees will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis to interested attendees. The trees will be native species from Tree Pittsburgh Heritage Nursery approximately 1-4 ft tall in 2-gallon pots.
Available Species:
Shagbark Hickory
Yellow Buckeye
Sycamore
Tulip Poplar
Who wouldn’t want a free tree!? In all seriousness, I would love to see some of you folks there. This would be a fun get together event in a neutral location to meet up and learn some new things and get to know each other, hopefully setting the stage for future local orchard/garden tours!
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Some leaves slightly droopy, but no frost last night.
Apple blossoms look good.
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I think we are set for another chilly night tonight too. I brought in all of my sensitive potted things.
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Anyone experience freeze/frost damage from the 2 nights recently?
It was projected to get down to 27 and 28 here but I don’t think it got that low either time, though it did get below freezing for most of the night the first night. No frosts here (being on a hill helps). Not many plants had any damage. I covered 2 of my medlars (they push growth early and were already leafed out) but the one that was uncovered got through it without any damage anyway. The pawpaws did have some flowers get killed, but most were fine. No damage noticed with the plums, peaches, pears, or apples.
Unfortunately, my Prok persimmon got near total bud kill again…(the same happened in 2020). Prok pushes growth a bit earlier than Yates, followed by Rosseyanka, and later Nikita’s Gift. Only Prok had damage though. I had a small Lehman’s Delight that had damage too but it was in a tree tube, so that may have caused it to push growth earlier than normal. I sprayed Pyganic yesterday to hopefully prevent ambrosia beetles from attacking it again (it did have some holes but I’m not sure if those are recent or from 2020). It got riddled with holes in 2020 after the May 9th freeze but it bounced back in summer and ended up fruiting last year. I love that Prok is such a strong and healthy grower, but it seems pretty susceptible to late freezes compared to other persimmons, which is disappointing.
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I covered my grapes and they seem fine.
Everything else is past bloom at this point. The 15 degree day killed almost all my plums and peach flowers so didn’t have anything left to lose there. The Asian pears seem fine and the apples are just starting to bloom now and they seem mostly fine as well. My orchard thermometer did show 27 both mornings.
10 day forecast has a low of 45 so I’m hoping we are done at this point but not getting my hopes up after that mid May frost a few years back.
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I hope everyone made it through the freezes reasonably. As @PA_Fruit_Grower mentioned, I think we might be in the clear for the year on freezing. No more fig shuffling for me!!!
If anyone knows of any Indigo Gem honeyberries for sale locally this year, please let me know. My order didn’t make it from Canada this year and I’d rather pay the price of plugs and get smaller plants, or bite the bullet and pick plants locally if they are a bit bigger.
For the workshop I posted above, apparently the permaculture speaker has canceled. If anyone knows anyone who might be interested in talking, please let me know. It’s possible I might put something together last minute for a small talk if they don’t find anything.
Well final count is in. Lost 100% of the plums, 100% of the peaches and 100% of the Asian pears. I really thought the pears would be ok, the blossoms looked good and it was warm during bloom but they all shriveled up and died immediately after they finished blooming.
That’s rough, sorry to hear it… Any potential success stories to make up for the losses this year?
What a difference a single warm day can make. My Nikita’s Gift persimmon went from having brown buds that looked like they were just starting to wake up yesterday to fully green buds that are pushing outward rapidly today. All the persimmons seemed to have a large boost in vigor over the past couple days.
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Sorry to hear that as well. I seem to have escaped freeze damage for the most part, but my Redhaven peach is barely producing any fruits this year. Not sure why, though it’s possible the freezes had some effect. Reliance was much later to bloom this year and is in full bloom currently, so hopefully I’ll get some from it.
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My pear and peach both looked fine during bloom with lots of blooms, but then just all died and didn’t form any fruit. I think it must have been internal damage during an earlier freeze.
However all is not lost, I see more strawberries, raspberries, blueberry, and grape flowers than ever before and my newly planted blackberries from last fall are really taking off as well. I’m glad I went for a wide variety as I’ll still get a lot of fresh fruit even in the worst years.
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Ah, yeah that’s frustrating. That could very well be what happened to my Redhaven.
Nice! Yes, it’s great to have berries for the reliability they provide compared to fruit trees.
It is great to have a bunch of options. If you continuously have frost challenges, maybe consider more late bloomers like persimmon, pawpaw, and jujube? Mine are all just starting to leaf out in the last week or two.
Tony my NG busted open in the last day or so too! I’m hoping for a good amount of growth this year. I have it trained to a 3 prong vase currently. I figured it won’t get tall enough to interfere with my solar panels if it’s putting energy into 3 leaders.
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