Cold Temperatures hurt the fruit buds!
I am tired and a little sad this morning. No matter how much hard work and skill you put in to the orchard, some conditions are just out of your control. Last night mother nature brought us one of those events. With our tree crops over four weeks ahead of an average year in development, they were susceptible to a hard frost. We had extended low temperatures over night. It was below 26 degrees F in the orchard last night for over 5 hours. We had a low of 22.5 degrees F at about 6:30am and than the temperature started to climb back up. With the wind last night it was impossible to use any frost protection methods effectively. It’s frustrating when there is little you can do to stop damage.
The important question is what does this mean for the fruit trees?
The Asian and American plums in full bloom and first bloom could have up to 90% damage to the buds. This is the predicted level based on cold damage research. It could be more or less in our orchard depending on several factors and we won’t know for a few days or weeks. No matter what there was serious damage on the plums last night!
The Hungarian cherries were not quite in bloom yet, so the buds can take lower temperatures, but I’m sure they were damaged to some level.
The apples and pears were in a stage of development that I believe allowed them to escape most of the bud damage. Even these trees may suffer a little damage.
The grapes had swollen buds and may have also suffered a little damage.
The small fruits were generally in a stage of development that should have allowed them to escape most of the cold damage potential.
All of the perennial fruit plants will be monitored and evaluated for damage in the next couple weeks and the real picture will become clearer. This is an unprecedented season for New York fruit growers. Nothing comes close to this in the recorded historical temperature records or from the memories of many “old timers” that I’ve spoken to about this season. What other crazy events are in store for us this season?
You can at least enjoy the visuals of the plum blooms, if we won’t be enjoying much of the fruit this year. The picture is from a couple days ago. I’ll keep you posted.
