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Fruit tree critical temperatures
 You can probably guess what
stage your fruit trees are at just based on the descriptions, but I've
included some photos here to help you decipher the differences.
Our peach trees are in the red calyx stage (10% kill at 23 degrees and
90% kill at 9 degrees), our pears are in the first white to full white
stage (10% kill at 25 to 26, 90% kill at 19 to 22), and our nectarine
has buds ranging from red calyx to full bloom (10% kill at 23 to 27,
90% kill at 9 to 24 degrees.)As you can see, you often find an array of bud stages on a single tree, which is good for us because it means that a late frost is less likely to kill off all of our fruit. Even though the currently open nectarine buds and  nearly open pear buds are probably going to die tonight, the less
precocious buds on each tree might pull through, and I'm not overly
concerned about our peach buds.All of that said, I'm not sure I expect pears this year. Although my sample size is very small, I've found that each of my fruit trees has produced flowers but no fruit the first year it blooms. Perhaps the trees aren't quite ready to pour that much energy into making fruits but are willing to make flowers in hopes that their pollen might pass on the tree's genes using someone else's energy budget? I'd be curious to hear if you've seen a similar strategy in your own young fruit trees. If my hypothesis is correct, we should see peaches from the tree that fruited last year and also from the tree that only bloomed last year, nectarines from the tree that bloomed last year, but no pears. Assuming we don't get any excessively cold weather in the next few weeks, that is.... Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.
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