I have one bloom on a miniature honeybabe and another on spice zee. You're way ahead of me if you're getting that much bloom already.

Fireball:

You probably haven't had enough chilling or you'd be ahead of me. We've had 900 hrs below 45 and the last two warm spells have hit 75F. The varieties blooming are about 2-300 hr types. Everything else won't be too far off. I smell another bad spring.

Fruit-

So how about inside your greenhouse, how are things going?

frank:

The identical trees inside the greenhouse are a few days behind. Do have first bloom on pluot and peach. The early blooming apricots are swelling. I've been holding down daytime temps inside hoping to aid sweet cherry bloom.

The guys in KS and MO might be right to be worried. I don't see anyway that we won't have an early bloom outside here on everything. Above ave chilling and now some really warm weather. Last yrs disaster was caused by really warm weather beginning in the second half of Febr.

The same thing is happening here. Just about everything is breaking dormancy. My Flavorosa pluot is just about in full bloom and Dapple Dandy is about 50 %

This post was edited by Steve357 on Fri, Jan 30, 15 at 21:25

Steve:

I hope you are in CA! A relatively freeze free area in CA. When I was there did see a little bloom this early but mostly Febr. Where I was at never had freeze damage but did have light frost into March.

Yes, N. California foothills. The same thing happened last year, though not quite this early and I still had a good crop. Fingers crossed!!

Funny thing, If drive 15 miles down to the valley floor everything seems to be dormant still. The guy at the nursery said it's due to the valley fog keeping the temps cool,

FN
Wow. That's way early. My cots buds swelled last week when the temp was in the 60. Thanks to the 3 inches of snow coming this weekend to slow them down.

Tony

F...we are a bit earlier here in SoCal this year. More Santa Ana winds (hot/desert) predicted for Super Sunday. My "Eva's Pride" peach is completely bloomed out as of today. I should be ok....hopefully.

Good luck, sounds like you need it!! All's well here so far.

Fruitnut,

You can protect the blooms in your greenhouse can't you?

You can read about it in the other thread (linked below) but it looks like Jan. weather has little effect on bloom here. Apparently not so in TX, where you guys bloom earlier anyway. Here, we just have to worry about the thorny spring weather mostly.

I hope your outside trees survive. You have some great new peach varieties. I'd like to hear some future reports on the fruit.

Here is a link that might be useful: Peaches and -20 degrees

This post was edited by olpea on Sat, Jan 31, 15 at 9:18

Same thing is happening to my peach tree in Spring, TX. The ice storm last year did in my fruit. I am prepared to wrap to protect this year, but it's way early. I'm afraid there are no bees around to pollinate either!

Mine is a Tropic Snow with white flesh and freestone.
Kristi

olpea:

Sure the greenhouse isn't an issue. Hasn't been below 36 or above 72 since Nov 1. It's also had ~1300 chill hrs in that time frame. I'll have plenty of new fruits to taste this yr.

It's the outdoor weather here that's difficult. We would normally have another ~30 nights below freezing. So anything blooming this early has no hope.

The northern areas that have had a few warm days could be headed towards an early bloom even though you're not seeing bud swell yet. If chilling is satisfied you are now on the clock accumulating the heat units needed to initiate blooming. It's too early to panic. Weather is the key. Hope for cool to cold, but not too cold, the next two months.

Kristi:

Good luck with your tree. For those that don't know Spring is near Houston. So you should only have a couple more freezes, maybe even none. You should be able to save the fruit by covering it and putting a light bulb inside.

FN
Good explanation of chilling requirements and heat units for buds break. I am hoping the temp stays cool also. But I am prepare to wrap my trees with tarps and light bulbs in the center to fight a few late frosts. Good luck my friend.

Tony

Kristi,
Tropic Snow has a chill requirement of 200 chill hours and Spring, Tx looks like it has about 500 to 600 hours average. It is going to tend to bloom early each year, but this year is much worse than usual. Spring looks to be about the same as Beaumont. My La Feliciana, Red Baraon, and Mid Pride peaches have a higher chill and have not bloomed yet.

My Southern Highbush blueberries are lower chill and are about half bloomed. My Gulf Beauty plum has 250 chill hour and started blooming last week, but still has 75% buds not blooming. Hopefully the later blooms will make it.

"If chilling is satisfied you are now on the clock accumulating the heat units needed to initiate blooming."

FN,
I'd like to ask a question about that. Your statement leaves me with the impression once the required heat units are reached (after chill requirement is met) the tree will bloom regardless of the cold temps.

In other words, as an example let's assume a tree (call it Fruitnut's Pleasure) needs 100 units of heat to bloom. Are you saying that tree will bloom once those units of heat are met, regardless of various temperature fluctuations, or regardless of daytime light?

I really don't know exactly how these models work. I've read once chilling is met, trees move from endo-dormancy to eco-dormancy (see article below). I guess my question is what other factors could prevent trees from moving to eco-dormancy in spite of warm winter weather (i.e. could cooler nights do it? Short periods of warm weather dispersed among periods of cold, etc.?) Beyond that, once trees move to eco-dormancy, is it just accumulated heat units which force bloom, or will cold weather "subtract" heat units?

I hope my questions don't sound unduly cerebral, but I'm really wondering if a warm Jan. in my area would have any effect on bloom times. So far, I've completely flipped my opinion.

First I thought warm Jan. = early bloom, but yesterday when I compared my records with historical temperature data, I couldn't see a correlation. That's not to say a really warm Jan. might force an early bloom, but from the temperature data I saw, there was no correlation (so far) for this area.

I see Jan. temps for sure make a difference in your locale, but a warm Jan. for you is quite a bit different than a warm Jan. for me. And like I said, I don't really know how growth models work, once chilling is met.

Here is a link that might be useful: MSU-Winter dormancy and chilling in woody plants

I woke up this morning and found this wonderful winter wonderland. This will definitely prevent the cots from pushing buds any further. What a relief!!!

Tony

The MI article says they complete chilling there usually in January. After that it's about accumulating the heat units needed to procede to bloom. In Amarillo I also figured that chilling needs were satisfied by sometime in January. I always hoped for cold weather after mid Jan to delay bloom. A couple yrs it stayed cold until March and then warmed up. Those were the good yrs with no freeze damage.

I'd suspect that in KS January is a little early for warm weather to advance growth. Febr/March is when you need to be concerned about warmth advancing bloom before you'd like. I'm not sure about the base temperature for early bud development. I'd suspect it's pretty low, 40F or below. Any temperature above the base between now and bloom, will advance bloom.

My low chill peaches pictured above probably satisfied chilling by mid Dec. The warmth the last 6 weeks has pushed them to bloom stage. We always hit 60-75F during the warm cycle typically each week all winter. That's plenty warm to push growth once the plant is ready.

I have a place halfway between Houston and Dallas and luckily my peaches have not bloomed yet. However this weekend I noticed my fig tree is starting to put out new leaves already. Though at least with it even though they will freeze back it will just put on more leaves later. I'm hoping we don't get another late freeze like last year after my trees all bloom.

I was thinking if I had a greenhouse I could heat it and could force bloom on low chill, and have the high chills outside in the ground. Super extending my season from January till forever. Plus those fruits, vegetables that need a long season i could grow in the green house. Now if only I could pay off the ten's of thousands I owe to afford a green house and enough money to pay the heating bill! Maybe in my next lifetime!

Peach blooms are beautiful, almost like ornamental cherry blossoms, but often bigger. Unfortunately I don't like peaches, and I don't think I would ever plant a flowering peach tree because I don't think I'd be able to get over the fact that they are still a peach tree. (maybe silly of me)

I have seen some pictures of beautiful apricot blossoms, but I don't know what variety they are. Maybe someone could tell me? There's a picture in the Wikipedia article, it's not Japanese.

Well...April 2nd and no ice storm in sight!

I planted this little twig of a tree in January 2014 (as I recall). I promptly cut it down by half to encourage branching. It gave me 7 delicious peaches in early June 2014. This year, it is nearly 10' tall and was loaded with blooms (the bees were very happy and I had forgotten how good the blossoms smell). It is now loaded with fruit. I stopped counting little peaches at 200 and that was on less than half the tree.

I don't know if Tropic Snow is "self-thinning"...so I have started removing small fruit that is not thriving. I bought some sleeves to slip over some of the branches to see if I can fend off the birds (they can have the upper branches). Some of the fruit are already the size of a half-dollar coin, but most are the size of quarters. YUM...time to find some really good peach recipes!!

K