Our efforts at spraying water on the fruit trees, in order to form ice and hopefully prevent the flowers/buds from going below about 30 degrees were not successful. It got down to 14 degrees and basically . . there was nothing we could do to save this year’s crop. It happens. While I’m sorry, I feel it may have worked out for the better because we can’t eat a ton of fruit on our diet and I think I ate my weight several times in plums last year. A good fruit crop would have totally blown the diet because how can you pass up a fresh peach or plum or apple off the tree?
The photo above shows the peach blossoms.
There are a few buds that had not opened. I didn’t feel them to see how they feel. I figured they either make it or they don’t. Messing with them now isn’t going to improve their chances.
The apple tree also has buds that look ok. You can see the leaves were damaged but there are lots more leaves to come.
The apricots, pomegranates, some of the pears, persimmons and cherries don’t appear to have any damage since they hadn’t even really budded out yet. Of course, the cherries and apricots have never produced so who knows if the cold affected them or not. I don’t have a lot of hope they’ll produce here ever. Apricots like consistent cold . . not hot one day and cold the next. Cherries . . we just don’t get enough chill hours here.
We do our best . . that’s all any of us can do. Whatever happens . . a whole lot of it is beyond our control.
dezertsuz says
Oh, there’s the report. It’s better than I thought it might be, but your cold was way worse than forecast, I think! You could always freeze dry them for later when you can eat them.