When I see your postings of 11F and 5F it makes me wonder how any fruit survives. Guess I’m also a little guilty obsessing over my low of 31F and 32F. Wishing you all the best. Hang in there Mrsg. Bill
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18 for me this morning. I’ve covered a few limbs but I don’t expect it to help. Strictly for comparison purposes. Tonight supposed to reach 24 and then warm up after that.
Reading about all of the trials and tribulations many of you go through every spring makes me think living on the border of 3b/4a may not be so bad. No fruit trees around here have even thought about waking up yet.
Last evening, I recruited hubby in an attempt to protect my two Franken trees with tarp covering the top of each tree and a light bulb hanging in the middle for a heat source.
Since this was impromtu, we did not have anything large enough to cover the whole trees. We tied down the tarp the best we could.
Well, with the wind gusted at 25-30 mph, It was ridiculous. Ater we had to re- tie a few times, we just let it be. Today is the coldest with a low at 5 F.
The thing I am convinced is it is good that I have kept my trees low. Much easier to cover a tree under 7 ft tall. Since this strange weather seems to be a norm, hubby has agreed to look into better materials and equipment to better protect those targeted trees, J plums, pluots, peaches/nects in the future.
@mrsg47, I am sorry, your last year orcharding in the northeast may be memorable in a wrong way. Think France 
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Mamuang,
I hope you can save some of those fruit buds. Yes, you will need a very large tarp from Home Depot or Lowes to cover the whole tree and secured the bottom of the tarp against the main trunk with no open areas so the winds will not lifted up like a hot air balloon. I used a Ziptight or duck tape for that part. I think the weather system you got now was from Us a week or so ago when We got a nasty icy and snowy storm. We are in a clear for 60’s and 70’s temp for now. I have the equipment to protect my multi-grafted cot if there is another dip the temp.
Tony
We got down to 19 here, it was supposed to be 23 so I was not planning on doing anything. But when I saw it was 19 when I woke up I went out and warmed things up with the blowtorch. Maybe I will save a few more blossoms with that. Tomorrow its supposed to be 18, if thats all it does I will be happy but if it goes much colder I will be losing more stuff. I’ll probably be out with the blowtorch again. As it is it looks like about half my apricots are goners, and a third of the plums, based on the charts that is.
Some good news is Hoyt Montrose is definitely behind on the bloom and it should be OK. Also Zard is way behind. It is tender but I think its still early enough in development that it will be OK. Hesse and Tomcot are way ahead and they are already toast.
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Lol. Care to explain how you warm things up with a blow torch?
Right now it’s 20 degrees. Tonight and tomorrow night it’s 14. Hopefully that’s it for the year 
So ready for spring!
Just crank it up and wave it 4’ or so below the blossoms. Its easy to see where the heat is going as it makes visible waves in the air. I figure giving them a bath of 100F+ for awhile will give some compensation.
Note this is my desperation idea, I never heard of anyone else doing it. I have a blowtorch setup for flame weeding.
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Scott, sorry to hear about your cots. I wish We all have a medium size green house and grow multi-grafted trees to avoid all this crazy temp swings.
Tony
We got around 18-20 in of snow then three nights of below zero this week ,was -15 last night.
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Wow…not fun.
Today looks sunny, but the stratus monster is almost guaranteed for tomorrow (the clouds are already building across TX moving northward with those south winds)…temps will go nowhere tomorrow :(…Monday looks warmer as a front moves through…decent the rest of the week with a good warm up Fri?Sat…witha chance of precip… Extended looks cold/crappy…but models this time of year are garbage…so we’ll see.
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My bag experiment did not seem to make much of a difference. Here is Spicezee.
And Robada
And finally Orange red which looks pretty good
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Only if you all join me, I will have a lot of chairs and a lot of wine!
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Tony,
I thought last night was windy. I was wrong. Today is windier and colder. It’s bad enough that we are breaking the record cold of March 4 in many towns and cities in MA. The wind is brutal.
This morning, the temp was 9 F temp and it will go down to 5 F tonight. This is actual temp, without a windchill factor. Right now it’s sunny with temp at 18 F but feel like 7 with windchill. This would be fine for us here, had fruit buds not being awaken by the 63, 64 and 69 F, just a week ago.
I chalked this up as another possible loss. Need to better prepare next year.
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My plum buds seem to have started to swell. So I went out and gave the plums and peach a spray of Surround.
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In older time in Russia farmers used smoking fires to protect blossoms from frost.
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In not so old times here in the USA, we did, too. Especially in citrus orchards. They were called smudge pots. Nowadays, citrus orchards will flood the orchard and use huge fans to keep the air moving.
Patty S.
And crusty bread and a fine evoo!
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@tonyOmahaz5 - I’m noticing A LOT of open space in your yard available for future tree plantings 
!!!
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