Don’t hate me but when I look at our long term forecast, I see no temps below 32º. In fact, there may only be one or two nights that it drops below 40º. We’ve had a very mild winter .. never had a fire in the fireplace and hardly used the heat in the house.
All it takes is one freeze, and especially a late freeze to do serious damage to the fruit trees. As I watched the lows predicted for this past Thursday night, my heart sank. They started out predicting 28º low, then it changed to 27º, and by the time I went to bed, they were saying it would get down to 25º. Many of the fruit trees have blooms already but since there wasn’t much I could do, I didn’t worry about it. The trees that had buds that had not opened yet, I was thinking they would be good to 27º but 25º was pushing it.
Friday morning I couldn’t wait to get up and see what things looked like. According to our thermometer, the lowest it got was 27º.
Bird Bath
The bird baths were frozen solid.
Garden Plants
The plants in the garden were frozen solid. Everything growing out there now won’t be bothered by it – broccoli, spinach, kale, lettuce, beets, cabbage.
I waited til this morning to again check the fruit trees and from what I can tell, they made it just fine.
Fig Tree
Leaves are opening all over the fig tree, but especially on the new shoots coming from the ground and they all appear to be ok.
Peach Tree
The peach tree blooms are so pretty and they all seem fine.
Pear Tree Blooms
Our pear trees are full of blooms. Last year we had a few blooms but the trees had only been in the ground a year, and they didn’t produce anything. I’m hoping for a few pears this year.
Apricot Trees
Apricots seem way more susceptible to late freezes than do most other fruits so they recommend late bloomers for our area and, it looks like our three trees did just what they were supposed to do. There’s new growth but no buds ready to break and no blossoms yet so we should be good. I was hoping for apricots this year since they’re three years old now but apricot trees don’t like a lot of temperature variation and we had a whole winter of 80º one day and 40º the next two days so I’m not real optimistic but . . you never know.
I’m hoping our forecast doesn’t change and we are done with freezing temps! I’m not ready for summer but I want our trees to produce a lot of fruit this year.
Kathy C says
I remember a few times when we lived in South Carolina and they had late winter freezes. I found out that SC grows more peaches than any other state including Georgia.
When they anticipated a freeze they did 2 things in the orchards. They set out smudge pots to try to warm air. And they would water the peach trees to cause ice to form over the peach buds to insulate them. I have no idea why they did that or if it worked. I also remember the Gaffney SC peaches being the BEST peaches I have ever had in my life.