Spring status - temps, blooms (long post)

10 years ago

This spring has mostly brought a smile to my face. My orchard has finally matured to the point where every apple tree I have planted is finally blooming nicely. The exception to this is two I planted last spring.

My pears have been blooming regularly now for 2 years. Nice Asian pears and a bartlett. All doing well.

My reliance peaches have been doing well for 3-4 years now. This year my redstar has matured to the point it will bear fruit. (maybe..)

Of the 12 trees I planted last spring, I lost about half due to deer predation. Last fall the deer broke through my fairly cheap plastic mesh fence. Despite mending, putting up wire, deer found their way through and ate from deer height down on all trees. Sadly, all new trees were chopped down to nothing. My white peaches made it happily as I wanted them to survive. I put up a new fence this spring and they have stayed out so far.

The sad part of this spring is the 27 degree temps reported by weather.com . I fear a repeat of last spring is going to happen. I had zero pears, a very very few apples (deer got a few of the few) but peaches made it well.

Pears were done blooming, peaches were near the end, apples were full bloom.

Lets hope things survive for everyone..

I attached a picture of my Empire apple tree. Such a pretty picture..

Good luck and happy spring to all.

Dan

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Comments (4)

danzeb
10 years ago
The weather certainly can ruin our best efforts. Here on Long Island we have had a very good spring. Better than usual with no spring frosts or high heat.
The first week of April I had 29 and 32 degrees but since then the worst has been upper 30s with mostly 40s and 50s at night with 50s, 60s and a few 70s during the day. It should always be that good. With nice even mild temperatures, bloom periods have been long with buds slowly opening over an extended period.
ericwi
10 years ago
Wintertime damage to our blueberry shrubs, from browsing rabbits, has turned out to be the single greatest difficulty that I have growing these shrubs. We have them scattered about the yard, so building some sort of physical barrier is not practical. I am using Plantskydd spray to make the stems less palatable to rabbits, but I am also putting out a cup of corn every evening as an alternate food source. We live in the city of Madison, and killing rabbits is frowned on.
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franktank232
10 years ago
I'd kill every one of them....Those hippies have a problem with it, then tell them its organic rabbit meat, with a hint of blueberry :)

Actually baiting them in is smart...you just need to let some lead fly. Fence in your yard or a part of it so you can dispatch them in privacy? My rabbit that did so much damage over the winter had an unfortunate run in with a high speed projectile. Poor thing... :)
dmtaylor
10 years ago
We never did get hit by that 27 F cold snap here -- it only got down to 32 F here so I imagine everything will be just fine here, thankfully. My sweet cherry will be blooming in the next couple of days (maybe even today with temperatures in the 70s!), and my apples over the next 2 weeks. My everbearing strawberries started kicking out blossoms like mad last week already and I picked them all off so they can build stronger roots and leaves. Raspberries and gooseberries are leafing out, and one of my blackberries. Hops are almost a foot tall now. Looks like spring has finally sprung. Yay!