Keeping an eye on some cold coming down a week from now. Nothing until then should effect anything. Seems like i never get through a bloom with some light frost.
Flavor Supreme (in the ground) looks to have a lot of blooms, although is still days/week out from blooming.
Tony, you are lucky to have pollinators around. I can see only myself as the main pollinator. I need to think about mason bees…
Milwaukee, WI this afternoon…interesting. This is what living next to very cold Lake Michigan waters does to your temps…in a hurry…
It took 49 minutes to go from 75F to 45F…
Took 5 minutes to go from 73F to 54F
Any frost around your parts?
http://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KOMA.html
Center of high pressure is sitting about over Lincoln.
I know what ya mean i’m on the Ludington, MI side of the lake, we can have some quick temp swings.
Scott
I didn’t know you used a blow torch to try to heat up your apricot trees! Hope you didn’t light any on fire! How many apricot trees do you have? So far I have found 1 – UNO – apricot on my apricot tree. Last year I lost hundreds of apricots on this tree due to frosty weather in April. I have not tasted the apricots off this tree yet. My peaches are doing okay, and I just learned a couple of my apple trees were growing too slowly since I planted them too deep (covered up the graft union) a few years ago. Argh!!! So I’m trying to rectify that. At least my Enterprise is going to town! For now, I’m re-contouring the slope around one of these trees and will have to wait till fall to move it. Beginner’s mistake. I did pick up a couple little apple trees from a local orchard to plant. Pink Lady and York. I wanted to pick up a couple trees from Urban Homestead in Bristol, VA, but they won’t pick up the phone or return my calls to make a Saturday appointment! Sorry, I’m just not going to drive 2 hours for nothing. And the e-mail isn’t working! But I do have my eye on a Dwarf Weeping Mulberry – those trees are so cool! And did you know mulberries are packed with polyphenols – very heart healthy! I’ll try to find a spot in my tiny front yard.
We got some frost last night and tonight also. I will check on the trees after work today. I will move the newly potted figs in the garage tonight.
Tony
I know it’s not for me Warm, but I’m just 25 miles North of Omaha so thought I’d chime in.
I got worried about last nights predicted temps so I put tarps and trash cans on my Honeyberry bushes, since most of them are showing flowers.
My big concern was how far along my Redhaven peach is. PF17 & Madison have lots of pink showing, but hardly any opened up. But there was just too much pink showing and opened on the RH for me to sleep good last night! Anyway, they were forecasting a low of 29, so I had a pile of wood over near that area and at 1:30AM it was 33 degrees so I headed over and began tending a fire all night, just in hopes that it would create a micro climate that might help out some on the open petals… (not sure it made any difference, or if it would have mattered anyway. I think they can withstand that kind of stuff for a bit, but I kept telling myself I’d kick myself if I at least didn’t try).
It got down to 28.2 according to my indoor/outdoor unit
I took a thermometer over and hung it on the fencing of the RH, opposite the fire. Don’t know if it’s an accurate one or not, I took it out of my garage just to have something to go by. So I don’t know if it’s even possible, but it showed about 34 degrees by the RH when it was 28.2 on my indoor/outdoor unit.
The birdbath about 15 yards south of the RH was iced over so I broke it to see how thick, and it was about 1/16th of an inch I’d say. The Rubbermaid trash cans I had turned over on the Honeyberries had a pretty thick layer of frost too.
Anyway, Mr. Redhaven would probably have been okay anyway, and if it zapped some of them I guess that’ll be less thinning later on… (Man, I hope I get a chance to thin!!!)
76 right now here in Albion, Maine. Holy cow!
Wow…quite a fire…it probably helped…although those temps are borderline for damage, but you never know.
I didn’t see that cold a few days ago. I was just looking at the surface map this morning and noticed all the cold across Nebraska…it was thick clouds here all night and upper 30Fs (still 44F and clouds now…this crap will not go away). Bunch of apricot flowers are blooming…bees need winter jackets on.
Another wet weekend coming up…warm…storm chances like really good.
Our NWS is equivocal about tonight. So it is a wait and see situation. Right now the forecast from the last three runs of the RAP are 36F. So that will be frost for me.
Tonight, initially clear skies and dry air will allow temperatures
to drop. Return flow across western Iowa is expected to spread in
high clouds after midnight. Cloud cover late tonight is the key as
to how cold it will get. Temperatures should remain above freezing.
However, localized patchy frost cannot be ruled out in the favored
cold valleys north of Highway 30 due to light winds.
At this point the only thing that can’t take much frost is my blooming plums. But my Superior pistils were (presumably) wiped out by our 4F night in on the Ides of March, so that leaves Alderman. I think my Redhaven is at calyx red to first pink so supposedly hardy to 25F with only 10% loss.
Yes its been a bad couple of years for cots, after a dozen good ones in a row for me.
I don’t think the flaming helped much in the end, I just had too many waves of frost. I have a few cots but nothing compared to what I should have on my 20 or so varieties. I also may not end up getting anything as the curc is going to find those cots quickly and I’m not sure I want to do all the sprays just for a few fruits.
Checked out my cots today - Flavor Delight looked fine at first, but now most of the flowers are obviously frost burned. I expect I’ll get a few late-bloomers. Apricots otoh are looking just fine, although they had only a couple days of pollinating weather, so I’ll see how many fruits were set at shuck-split.
Just one week too early can be fatal.
20 apricot varieties! That’s a lot of cots! I’ve just got one – self-fertile. Not sure if I want to get another apricot (unless it’s a late-blooming variety), but I might plant one little peach next year. I just planted two apples I got from a local orchard – $18 a pop. Pink Lady and York. I got to try a Pink Lady and Rome (both excellent keepers) before we decided on the taste of the Pink Lady. I forgot how small these things are when first planted. But you’ve had 12 good years for apricots? My apricot tree has grown – it was about 15 feet high before I pruned it shorter. But I’m a little frustrated with the lack of edibles on it – ya know!
Scott is the cot-meister
Nice efforts Jerry. BTW, according to Stark Bros., open blossoms on honey berries can handle temps down to +8 F and still bear fruit.
Good to hear that, I had no idea they were that cold hardy. I’m pretty new to HB’s, I planted some in '15 & some in '16. Haven’t paid a ton of attention to them, but I noticed when I went to cover them all up that there were a ton of flowers on the ground. I wondered if it was a male/female thing, or if they didn’t get pollinated and aborted? I haven’t seen a single bee of any kind so far this year. I don’t imagine there’s much I can do other than just await the results.
Yeah I always worry about pollination with them they are so early. Mine started blooming yesterday and we had an inch and a half of snow on the ground this morning. They always seem to put out a nice crop though.
From what I got off mine last year, I really like them pretty well (well some of them…) I thought Aurora was really good, but one of the others seemed kinda bitter - either Borealis or Indigo Gem, can’t recall just now. This year I should also have a taste of Tundra. So many different varieties, I only wish I could taste-test them prior to planting!
Scott
It’s your call. I suppose you could lightly spray them, or experiment with different sprays to see what knocks out bugs and disease the best. It’s not like you have much to lose, if it’s just a few apricots on each tree. I lost track of how many fruit trees you have planted, total! I suppose it doesn’t hurt to have fruit varieties for the very reason you’re talking about – the cots just didn’t do well this year. But having apples, peaches, figs and other fruits helps compensate for the loss.
I finally killed the stupid peach borers on 3 of my trees. With the early February warming and early blossoms, I found some jellied frass and sawdust at the bottom of some of these trees. I did try painting with neem oil, AND putting mothballs around the tree. The mothballs worked pretty good to kill those bugs. I checked today, and NO FRASS! However, this one peach tree needs a little help with WHAT – I’m not sure. I’ll have to put up pictures and get everyone’s opinion.
Melinda
