I am located in zone 8A halfway between Houston and Dallas. We had a really strange winter. We had a few days of severe freezes but not the amount of chill hours we normally get. My trees still have not broke dormancy on most of them yet. They are finally leafing out some and showing a few signs of blooming. Normally by this time I would have peaches the size of quarters by now. Do you think they will still bloom and produce this year or just write them off for this year?
Those trees are showing the effects of a severe lack of chilling. When peaches are that late leafing out chilling was really short. Up here in Alpine I’ve never seen a peach or nectarine do that. There are a few this yr like Harko that didn’t set but at least the foliage is coming out nicely.
Your trees aren’t going to bloom and fruit anything like normal. Just hope for good foliage and not too much blind wood so you have a chance next yr. You may need to change your pruning some to account for the poor growth.
That’s pretty much what I figured. It looks like they will all be leafing out finally in the next couple weeks. It has been a strange year. I have two pear trees side by side that are the same type. One of them bloomed and fully leafed out and the other one only has a few leaves right now.
Yeah big time lack of chill up here in Dallas as well. Not much is going to perform too well this year. From the looks of the trees this year had less chill than last year which was really short on chill itself. Better luck next year.
Drew
Same here. I have a Sam Houston peach that has a very low CH. It has bloomed and is covered in fruit and my other peaches are not dead but look it… I didn’t know what was going on either but that makes sense. It’s strange that I have freeze damage on my fig but we didn’t have but about 4-500 chill hours.
At least this year I will get a few plums. Last year the trees were so loaded that the limbs were almost breaking even after thinning. This year it is a lighter crop but they are getting larger. I will also have more figs than I know what to do with again this year.
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