White paint for delaying bloom

[alan]

@Olpea

That may legitimately be the case in your climate, but it’s not been the case here, since I’ve been growing peaches.

I don’t think it is something that happens especially in my climate and after doing a quick CHAT search I realize that the causes for this one time occurrence (I misworded it when I said there are even year- but hey, I didn’t put in an s!) were likely related to the relative frost hardiness of specific varieties at the time of the event. There are 3 possible reasons this can happen, as I recall, but not really worth the effort of going into since it isn’t relevant to the discussion. The varieties that flowered later probably would have been better off if they’d flowered later still.

[benthegirl]

@Olpea

The biggest flaw in my “trial” is that the sample size is so low. But if there is a big visual difference in bloom time, I think that will perhaps give me encouragement to try with bigger numbers.

@Olpea I don’t think you should finish your trial at bloom time! The study found a difference in kg fruit per tree even though the bloom was not significantly delayed by the white latex paint.

Also like @JDN they sprayed with new white (interior flat) latex paint. It was slightly thicker- diluted 5 parts water to 1 part paint instead of 8:1.