Many of us are seeing extreme shifts in weather from 80’s into the 30’s. Temperature swings by themselves of some kind are not terribly unusual this time of year in early spring. We have also saw extreme droughts last year and a very wet and cold winter. Is everyone else seeing very intense weather in recent years? How does this impact your fruit growing?
It was in the upper 60s a few days ago and starting to drop tomorrow. Saturday low predicted at 26 and warming back up on Monday. I pray this will be the last low temp of this growing season.
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We might have had our last freeze. No lows colder than 42 in the forecast as far ahead as I can see.
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Our average last freeze is April 11, I think this year, it may have been last week.
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It’s skirting near the freezing point this week, but my fruit trees are nowhere near bloom.
I see the neighbor’s early magnolia breaking into flower - that one usually gets frostburned
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our winters are colder and snowier than average. summer seem about normal but if you check averages, its slightly warmer.
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Winter here is a constant yoyo. That will never change. It never goes a week without a big temperature swing. The worst part of this winter was that the coldest day of winter was our very first freeze in mid November at 17F. It never got below 21F after that. That first freeze wiped out the figs and damaged my persimmon.
I had spring freeze damage Febr, March, and April. That took all the stonefruit. But still have a big crop of apples and pears if we can avoid another freeze.
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Seems we have been lucky so far on everything…unless you like apricots that is! This photo is flat wonderful peach which with blooms like this and red foliage is a show stopper! Dont hold your breath on the peaches they are nothing special!
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Mother nature must really have it or for us in the upper midwest. It’s looking like several inches of snow here on Saturday and lows around 25 Saturday night.
My apples are at tight cluster. It looks like critical temps is 27F for 10% bud kill and 21F for 90% bud kill.
Should I get some large tarps to cover the trees?
I’d bungee cord a sprinkler to the top of a step ladder and run it all night. Should protect a good sized area at those temps
I’m bringing in the container trees that are blooming and everything else stays. I do have a lot of blooms on the plums outside. They are on their own. The sweet cherry is just showing white so hopefully it keeps most of its blooms closed until after Sunday.
I have three apple trees I’m trying to protect. They are all around 10ft tall. Should the sprinkler be spraying down on them or does it matter?
This winter got all my tree fruit except my apples so I really don’t want to lose those.
To top it all off Saturday is my birthday. Happy flipping birthday to me.
As long as they are constantly getting wet it should provide enough protection.
Thanks for the tips. It looks like if I can to do any protection it will have to be a sprinkler system. The winds are going to good to 30+ mph so covering is probably not going to cut it.
Looks like different forecasts are aligning and lows will be around 25. Snow will be wet and sticky with around 5 inches.
If there is snow covering the branches and clusters do you think that will provide any insulation or protection?
I’m hoping the snow will add insulation to the strawberry bed
You’d think so, evidently what gives protection is the fact that water gives off heat when it freezes, so if you’re constantly sprinkling water and its continually freezing, thats where you get your protection. Not going to help if it got down to say, 15, but, at the temps they are talking it could make a 2-3 degree difference and that 2-3 degrees might make a big difference for you in what survives.
Most of you are drowning in water but at my location in Kansas we got all the water at once and now we have cracks again and no water! Lows in the high 30’s are back! We are seeing days in the 80’s again. We are thankful for the heavy winter rains! The water we got replenished the water table so the fruit trees look great! It is stranger weather all the time!
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We now have the opposite of the cracks in the ground! Very heavy rains are falling right now!
These heavy rains could not have came at a better time! With grafts healing and new trees in the ground im very thankful.
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Central Montana we got an unusually late cold spell down First few days of May. It got down to 11F with some pretty driving wind. Thankfully it was preceded by a good bit of snow, maybe 4 inches. I’m not sure of the fate of some of the buds of various things yet, but for leafy green things - What wasn’t covered got frostbite. Even the grass. It definitely didn’t do any favors for my raspberries. I think The canes may have lost 3/4 of their potential yield on the floricanes that had all broken bud.
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