Potential damage from extreme spring frost in the northeast

I have that same one. Installed March 2015 on top of a 15 foot mast about 50 ft from house. Have not had to take it down for troubleshooting yet so I’m pretty satisfied. I always expect these things to be less than advertised.

Snow and sleet most of the day here, didn’t really stick though.

Forecast low of 25 tonight…then hopefully in the clear!

We’ll see soon if anything made it.

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Here are a couple local articles about fires in the orchard to save them, sorry if this has already been talked about. Orchard sets 200 fires Then they deploy the “frost dragon”.

Another sad local frost story Orchard forced to extinguish fires

I refuse to inspect the orchard until after tonight’s temp scare. I am sure I lost all plums and peaches on Wed night… I won’t light fires tonight due to high winds currently and forecasted through tomorrow.

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I just received an excellent article from a NC extension agent in the county next to mine.

It includes many close up pictures of damage to blueberry, apples and peaches from the last two freezes.

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Blue,

Thank you very much for sharing the article. The accompanying pictures in the article were very helpful.

This is the first year I have had freeze damage on fruitlets. My apricots are very similar looking to the frozen peach pictures. I now understand how they evolve, immediately after the freeze they may look OK, then they start browning on the inside, and in a few days they are hard and dead.

I have about 9 flower buds on my Shui Mi Tao peach, which happens to be the most fragile peach tree I own. The rest have zero flowers this year. What a killer. Also out of my four apricot trees only my Harglow has five buds at ‘popcorn’ stage. Lots of plums this summer!

I think in the next two weeks, we will find out the extent of fruit damage each of us from the last cold snap.

As the article say some fruit let may look good now but they may be damaged inside (my usual pessimistic self starts to show)

I’m going to wait about 2 weeks and see how my stuff looks. I hope the final result will be better than expected.

I was very impressed with the pictures in the link and the explanations

You and blueberrythrill are right. I am just anxious to see one flower. I’m still in tight cluster, but will spray this sunday as it will be in the 60’s, thats my optimistic side showing! :smile:

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mrsg:

I’m trying to be optimistic too!

I sprayed the apples tonight and the peaches yesterday.

After owning my multi-grafted pear tree for SEVEN years this is the first year three of the varieities have large buds that are still in tight cluster. Its a long wait to have one or two late frosts kill everything. My cherries look great as do my plums and apples. The rest is toast.

Scott,

Sorry about your frost damage. That’s disappointing.

What I’m seeing is brownish red in the center of some apple buds- but mostly the king buds. The smaller buds seem mostly all green. I’m also seeing bees all over plum blossoms- it seems more activity than usual. On my property my favorite J. plums flowered too soon and look like toast, but my Shiro looks beautiful and all the E Plums seem fine. Shiro flowered later this year than other J. plums.

My Eldorado plum tree is dead from two seasons of cambium freeze damage but I grafted its wood onto a Shiro that is flourishing (also to several Shiros in my nursery).

Winter temps killed peach buds at a third of the sites I’ve seen that I manage, so it was clearly only a matter of a degree or two that made the difference. At one of the sites the peach flowers were diminished on two varieties but TangOs 2 had an overset, which adds to evidence that it is particularly winter hardy. Also a Rariton Rose showed good set at a site where 15 other varieties were blank including Madison and Red Haven.

We keep getting down to 20 degrees at night. Looking at the maps…the entire country is getting crazy weather right now. I hope things calm down soon.

I’m far enough behind here, not much damage, just a very little. I’m in the Midwest though, not Northeast. We are actually later than normal. Everything is at popcorn stage, nowhere near having any fruit.

The amount of damage is still unknown to me. Here’s my observation on flower development. Plums, pluots and some ornamentals flowerd 2 to 3 weeks early. Bud development and flowering has stretched out over a longer period of time on individual trees. Some flowers are just opening now while others opened 3 weeks ago. Apples, pears and cherries haven’t opened yet. Pears have leaves but not apples, Pawpaws or IE mulberry.
Weather has been sunny and warmer the last few days. Yesterday it was 62 yet there are much fewer bees this year.

I’m very worried about my FK/DD/FQ pluot combo tree. Losing the fruit crop was not that big of a deal. But the tender young leaves appear to be toast. I just hope it puts out enough new foliage to keep the tree alive this summer. I also got leaf freeze damage on my Methley but not quite as bad as the Pluots.

With plums and pluots flowering weeks early and then the freeze, flowers were dead and I thought there would be no fruit. But then with day time temperatures mostly in the 50s with some warmer days upper 60s and night time temps around 40 all through April, the garden was in slow motion. All through the month small numbers of flowers continued to open on those trees. I spotted a few flowers open today a month after the initial surge of flowers. The result is some tiny fruit on all the plums and pluots and none or very little thinning required.

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Nice to hear!