Frank:

You either need to move south or build that high tunnel!! My buddy and I are building him a protective structure. Not really a high tunnel except during spring freeze season. It will be heated as needed then. After spring freezes pass it will be covered with shade cloth/hail netting/bird screen. In your environment you might not need spring freeze protection as much as season extension and added heat. But doing both would add at least 60 days to your growing season.

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Fruit-

I have a buddy who put up a greenhouse this past fall..he says its the best thing he's ever done (grows tropicals/starts)...

I have everything i need for a 12x24 high tunnel (not that big, but i don't have a ton of room here), except i have to move around a bunch of garden beds to make room for it=i need some time, which is hard to come by with these 3 little kids i have! I just bought a bunch of 1 5/8 metal posts for the ground posts and i have the 10'6" top rail for the hoops and the bender...need to order the plastic. Not sure if i would heat it or not, but the plastic would stay up year round...

Those ventless heaters aren't too expensive and last year you would have needed it. Also if you leave the poly on all year you are risking snow collapse and spring freeze injury because that will advance bloom too much. I'd be more inclined to think poly from sometime in March until October.

A poly covered high tunnel offers very little freeze protection without heat. You might need heat in fall as well.

This is what all that blue on the map means in the real world. This stuff should have been gone 10 days ago.
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I feel for you guys up north, but I don't know what that map is doing showing blue over my area. 92F here right now and the 5 and 10 day forecasts are showing at or above normal temps. Me, I'm dying down here, because just 7 days ago I was still wearing my winter jacket in the mornings and evenings.

Sunnibel-

Its for the period april 18th to the 25th...it just shows where it thinks below normal temps will occur. Its pretty good for the most part, but can be off. Weather models are very prone to being incorrect in the long range... The model above is based on the Canadian weather model..the Americans have the GFS...here is a loop based on 2m (6ft) temperature anomalies over the next 384hrs...

Loop

as you can see, nothing above normal until April 25th in these parts...of course its a model and the further out you go, the more error prone...but patterns are just that...they tend to repeat. I don't expect any sort of warm air up here until late in the month and i see a very wet/cold pattern in the cards.

Be lucky you have some warmth...i could use it. This is getting old.

I know what you are talking about, but my reaction is a bit different. Monday night is rained 2 inches, then skiff of snow overnight. Tuesday freezing rain, sleet then hailed a lot all with copious amounts of thunder and lightning, Last night 21 degrees. Probably doomed the apricots. But I am dancing, although very carefully as the ground is covered with 3-4 inches of hail,frozen rain and sleet. Why would this make me happy? In the last 36 hrs I have had more precipt than in the last 10 months. WOO-HOO

17f last night here. Still only 24f mid afternoon. The forecast says 12f tonight.

Dont think those apricot blooms are going to make it.....

I wonder if any of the other buds will survive if they were just swollen and didn pop open yet?

The European model is supposed to be the most accurate now.

The NWS is predicting a wetter-than-normal spring/summer, which we really need after the drought.

jagchaser, cross your fingers that some of those buds will be okay, but at 12F that's really going to be tough. We were 5F here yesterday morning but everything is still locked tight in winter bud stage (except for pussywillows).

In SE Michigan we have not seen 60F yet. The highest was 57, a couple of days. We are usually warmer than Frank, but not this year. I have started the 15th jar of sprouts indoors, because there is absolutely nothing moving in the garden.

jagchaser,where are you? I am between Loup City and St. Paul.

Ya I dont think the apricot will do anything this year. We are looking at record low temps tonight again. I walked thru the orchard this morning and it looks like most of the apples, tart cherries, pears, and plums are ok. A few of those have swollen buds, but no color and not all of the buds are swollen. Peaches, apricots and of course the pluots are toast for the year I bet. They for the most part are showing color.

Its so hard to grow anything here. We have hit 80 already with lots of 70's and then we dive back down like this. My average last frost is still aways out, may 1-10!

Bruce, Im at North Platte. Got a place down on the state line by beaver city that I am planning on moving to this summer. Might help to get out of this river valley and down into some real soil.....

More of the same:

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So maybe in May we'll hit 60F