Dogwood winter 2014
Forecast low: 26. Actual low: 23. Fruit damage: high.
I've tried protecting tree blooms in the past, but haven't had any luck with wrapping trees and
don't want to try to run sprinklers all night. So we just roll
with the weather, some years not getting any tree fruits at all.
I had hoped that this year's slow spring meant our trees would bloom late enough to miss the hard freezes, and the blooms were
slow, but the freeze still came. The question is --- did it kill
everything? It's hard to say how low the temperature actually got
at various levels above the ground and in different parts of the
yard. The apple blossom above was clearly nipped, but many of the
dwarf apples closer to the hillside are running slower and are at first
pink or even tight cluster stage --- some of them might have made
it. (Here's a chart of critical temperatures in case you're dealing with a similar late freeze and want to guess which of your trees are in danger.)
Low-lying plants are much easier to protect. I pulled out all of my old pieces of row-cover fabric to shelter tender vegetable seedlings like lettuce, broccoli, and cabbages.
At this time of year, I
often cover up strawberries too, but only a few had even opened as far
as the flowers shown to the right --- "popcorn stage." The popcorn
flowers will have gotten nipped, since they can be damaged when the
temperature drops to 26.5, but tight flower buds are okay down to
22. I figured it was better to miss five or ten of the earliest
strawberries than to lose whole beds of broccoli.
Under their covers, all
of the seedlings came through with flying colors, even though the freeze
was so hard that weeds in the yard like clover and dock were nipped
back. I usually don't cover peas, but I was a little concerned
about them and carefully laid a row cover over half of the beds.
Interestingly, of the uncovered beds, one (in front of the trailer) was
moderately nipped and one (in the mule garden beside quick hoops) looked
just fine. A few pea seedlings elsewhere in the mule garden came
out from under their cover and those were nipped, so it seems like
microclimate effects are hard at work in the garden.
The good news is that,
even if we don't get any tree fruits this year, we should have plenty of
berries to go around. Our blueberry flowers are in what's called a
tight cluster, safe down to 20 to 23 degrees, so most should be
okay. Blackberries and raspberries haven't enough thought about
blooming, and their leaves came through the freeze just fine. Add
in strawberries and figs and we'll definitely enjoy fruits this summer
--- yet another reason to grow berries even though they take a bit more work day to day than fruit trees do.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Here in s.w. Oregon all our fruit trees have bloomed! Yikes!!
My strawberry plants are blooming and Mt raspberry plants are loaded with flower buds. Peas are up and garlic is growing. I have taken the chives Swiss chard and kale out of the green house.
Just praying that no snow or heavy frost appears.
Any updates on how the Hardy Kiwis did?
Ours our loaded with blossoms this year and we were lucky enough to not dip below freezing here.
The cuttings I stuck in a pot seem to have a few that may have rooted, but all the cuttings I completely buried seem to have done better. I will update you again later.