I’m scratching my head over here, and looked all over the interwebs… to no avail. We had a 23 degree morning back in November, and most of the trees behaved as you would expect. My plums and plum crosses (pluots, pluerries, etc.) all on citation still have anywhere from 3/4 to full green leaf. All the peaches, cherries, jujube’s, figs, etc… lost their leaves. The apples are keeping a few leaves, as normal… I think everything was stressed from April to August as we had less than 1" of rain over that period, followed by 20" spread out over September and the first part of October… That being said, we planted 40 Peach / Almond Cross rootstocks, and 10 Cherry Rootstocks mid September, and the peach/almond kept leaves, while the cherry dropped them… I’m confused as to how trees decide if they will let their leaves “Freeze” and wondering if any of you have a better understanding as to triggers that affect this process?
You planted them in the fall and were probably fed and watered so they grew. I was never a fan of fall planting. Although I have to do it from time to time. They should be fine, tough plants. So food, water and amount of light are the factors that trigger dormancy. No we don’t know a lot about it it seems.
i have noticed fruit trees in general hold leaves a long time. Often not even turning color. For me it is peach that does it the most. Tart cherries had fall colors, sweet did not, nor plums or peaches. Sometimes an early fall freeze damages plants. It happened last year here. I lost 3 peach seedlings, mulberry plants and figs were hit hard. I was not able to see the extent of damage till spring.
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