They are non-showy Tippy.
Here is the thread you referred to. It has pictures of blooms throughout the thread. Mostly peach or nects, but some other fruits as well.
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I have a mature Raspberry Red nectarine that is loaded with flower buds that all appear to be swelling. This might finally be the year. I believe i hit a minimum of -13F at least 2 times and was below zero maybe 20 ish times. I’m very pumped. Also the apricot is loaded, although that tree is still smallish.
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Looking like a fruitless summer ahead in 5B East Central Illinois. We had 25/26 degree temps this morning. From what I’ve read these temps are killers for new and pollinated blooms. Our apple trees looked like the only trees that were going to produce this year. I’m guessing this sudden cold snap will polish off the blooms and anything that may have been pollinated. It seems that those ultra low temps were only sustained for a couple of hours though. Our Zestar, Honeycrisp and Pink Lady looked so good this year too. Prolific blooming. There’s an orchard full of Zestars about 5 miles from me. I wonder what it means for them. Sigh.
@Olpea - I may have some pruning questions for you in a future thread. One of my standard peaches (Gala) gotten really tall. It seems my pruning has chased all of the growth to the top. With no fruit to speak of this year I’m giving thought to how I could induce new fruiting wood lower on the tree or some aggressive pruning without shocking the tree too much. I’ll start searching through threads on here first. The Gala peaches from this tree are fantastic.
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When you want to tag a member, put this symbol @ in front of their handle name. Like this @Olpea
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Thank you!
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Here too. We had record cold temps in the KC area. Saturday set a record for the lowest high for that date (48F for the high I believe). Sunday morning was a record low for that date (31F downtown KC). It was the 12 latest freeze for this area on record.
It was considerably colder south of KCMO where our orchard is located. Two weather underground weather stations near our orchard reported 24F as a low. I’m pretty sure practically everything was lost.
Peaches were at shuck split, apples were at bloom and post bloom. Cherries were at petal fall with some blooms. I’ve been through this before and it generally takes about a week for blooms and fruitlets to drop off. It was warm enough today, I could already see some fruitlets starting to darken.
Two large orchards west of the city hired helicopters to protect their crops. Last I heard the cost is somewhere around $1500 per hour, but that was several years ago. Temps didn’t get nearly as cold west of the city, so the helicopters likely saved their crops. Here is the choppers in the two orchards.
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Wow. I hope that works for them. I wonder if they’re eligible for crop insurance. Sorry to hear that we’re all in this same boat. I walked around last night and saw lots of frost burned apple blossoms. Hard to say exactly what’s going on with the remaining peach blossoms but I suspect they’ll all be on the ground in a few days.
When this has happened before… have you seen your trees compensate the following year for the lack of production?
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Peach trees don’t. They will set full crops back to back years, since they fruit from the previous season’s wood.
Sometimes apples can fall into an alternate bearing pattern, if overcropped or thinned too late, since they mostly fruit off spurs. Some varieties are more prone to biannual bearing than others.
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I noticed that a fair number of branches are essentially barren of leaves and fruit buds. I believe this is damage from December. Am I better off trimming these back? They aren’t dead. They are just very sparse on leaves.
If you need to prune the tree, you could trim those back. Some branches will start to push leaves then die because they were already winter killed in Dec.
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I already did my normal dormant pruning but I wasn’t as thorough as I should have been. So yes, I suppose this is my opportunity to scale back while generating more fruiting wood for next year.
I really appreciate your time. Thank you.
Are your trees in ground? Did you have milder than average Dec- early Feb like the Northeast?
It was interesting that your stone fruit have survived subzero degrees several time this winter and sustained no damage. It is not the norm, IMO.
This weather station is about 4,500 ft away from us and about 130 ft lower in elevation. I’m hoping we were one degree warmer. Peaches, plums and tart cherries were loaded this year and post bloom / set fruit. Pears and apples were loaded and full bloom. My trees are pretty large. I’m hoping the charts are correct and we have no more than an 80-90% loss. Due to the volume of my trees, that would still be an okay amount of fruit. We still have Wednesday night to go, however, predicted low of 31 but I suspect another night close to 27-28. Right on the edge. Fingers crossed.
Good luck. I hope you come out better than you’re thinking. It’s painful enough as a hobby. Can’t imagine relying on this for income. I always tell my daughter it’s a good thing we aren’t relying on this for winter food. Uggh. And of course this is the first year I’ve had really good blooms on my Honeycrisp. Been waiting 9 or 10 years for this. Guess I’ll be waiting one more.
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A lot of stuff in my garden looks pretty unhappy. I see some frost damage on apple blossoms. Hardy kiwi leaves with blotches of freeze damage. Even the tender new leaves on my maple trees are sagging after a couple rounds of this hot-freeze cycle. Perfect weather for another freeze Wednesday night, but I’m hoping it won’t drop that low.
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I checked my trees this morning before work and all the blossoms had a coat of frost. I just checked things after work. I’m seeing a lot of what I expected: some ovules look bright green, others are brown. Some flower petals look alright, some are tinged. I can’t remember how long it takes for all
damage to visualize, though. Supposed to be 30 wednesday night. Fingers still crossed.
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What do you think is going on with this sweet cherry in the first picture? Why so sparse up high? The few sweet cherries that I do have are all droopy too. That was really only noticeable after the most recent 26 degree weather.
The other two pictures are peaches that seem to be suffering. They are still green for the fingernail test but no vegetation out at the tips. Actually in one photo there’s leaves at the tip but it’s like it’s stripped leading up to it. What do you do in these circumstances? Do you prune back these bare tips?
I’m very sorry to hear that Mark.
My apricots took 24F after petal fall this year and I still have a full crop. I have had the same temps at the same fruiting stage other years and have lost everything.
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I wonder if permanently installed fans could function as a cost effective frost preventative for smaller growers or even a backyard hobbyist. They’re used in Japan in tea plantations.
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Kxmoto,
It looks to me like your peaches had some winter kill. Let the foliage fill in and it should become easier to figure out what to prune. The big thing is to keep the tree low, if you want to pick fruit from the ground.
It’s been a very long time since I last tried to grow sweet cherries, but I’m also guessing winter kill.
It’s not a huge deal to jump in and prune all the dead out. Instead, again try to keep it low enough so you can practically pick it. A 20’ tall cherry tree is for the birds. That’s the only ones who will be enjoying your cherries.
One other thing I might mention is to expand the mulched area around your peach trees. Peach trees hate sod. I like to keep a 10’ diameter weed free zone around peach trees.
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