Buddy, I know exactly what you mean. I, too, am worried. My peaches and nectarines are right now in full bloom. Currently, we are plagued with saturated ground. I'm sitting on hundreds of new berry plants and can do nothing. This is three years straight now!! Gotta love nature.

Brook

How cold are they predicting? What city are you near? I'd like to follow your weather.

We are predicted at 33F Th morning. As usual a few days ago it was 40F then 35F now 33F. Does yours go that way during a freeze? Here that's the normal progression.

I feel your pain. Our peaches, plums, cherries, and blueberries are opening up and a possible freeze coming Thurs night. Our asparagus is up, a full month sooner than last year.

Jake

My Tomcot apricots opened today! Raining out and 50F... NWS here says 34F thursday, but the models are bouncing anywhere from 28-30F... Let me know where you guys are at and i can give you an idea what the models are showing.

It is going to be 32 and 31 Thu and Fri (I live some 40 miles from Denninmi). Enough to do the apricots in.

You know what Mark Twain said, everyone complains about the weather but no one does anything about it.

Amen! Dang wind tore about 6-7 branches off some of my tomato plants...Grrr...30+ mph gusts.

Glib: do you find the info in the linked table below from MSU to be inaccurate for apricot? I don't have any apricots but am curious.

Here is a link that might be useful: Temp threshholds

Mid to high 80s today, and the typical last frost date is 4 or 5 weeks away!

Fruitnut wrote:

"How cold are they predicting? What city are you near? I'd like to follow your weather.
We are predicted at 33F Th morning. As usual a few days ago it was 40F then 35F now 33F. Does yours go that way during a freeze? Here that's the normal progression."

I guess you were asking me. Here's my local weather link:

http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=48324&wuSelect=WEATHER

They're saying lows around 30/31 Friday and Saturday, but with clouds and a breeze. In my experience, that isn't as damaging as a clear night with a good radiational freeze. So, we'll see.

Magnolia stellata is in full bloom. Saucer Magnolias are just about out. They are my indicator species. If they look like brown paper bags the next morning, the fruit will be damaged. If they squeak through with just some tipburn on the petals, the rest will be OK.

I really don't see anything below may 28F or so. There just isn't a lot of cold air to work with to the north. Tonite 35F, tomorrow nite 33F.. i'll let u know how i fair.

I think apricot blooms are safe to 28F or so, as are most trees. The only thing blooming in my yard is apricots, so everything else should be fine. I might cover the apricots depending on the forecast.

Michael, I just guessed based on what I thought was the relative resistance of blooms. In fact that table shows minimal variations from bloom to bloom, so I stand corrected.

Denninmi.

i've got my japanese plum in full bloom and the cherries and nectarine aren't too far behind.

I keep debating whether or not to start pulling figs out of the basement or not.

We'll see....

~Chills

Chills - how did the exotic stuff winter over -- persimmons, jujubes, Che?

I'm assuming they did well. It was the mildest winter in many years, and your being just blocks from Lake St. Clair gives you a few more degrees of protection than I get in the middle of Oakland County.

I think I hit right around Zero to 2 degrees a few nights -- right after New Years and again around the end of January.

I planted a pair of Che and a Rossenyanka and a Nikita's Gift persimmon last year in-ground and they seemed to all have made it -- a bit early to tell for sure, but it looks like all came through.

The jujube's are always real slow to come out of dormancy for me. Che looks fine, finally started growing last year and with the exception of a couple branches which were girdled by the passionflower (my front yard is in zone denial) all the branches look good. i've never had any die back on the Che and the jujube's only seem to lose the stems they want to drop off anyway (though they really haven't grown well for me...I'm going to see if a regular fertilizing regiment this year helps out as my soil tested out low in N)

The persimmon scratches green; except for a couple thin branches which ended up shaded most of last growing season, I think it aborted those branches anyway as they were doa before the cold weather even hit. i'll post more once it starts pushing leaves and such. Maybe this will be the year I get fruit!?! I added an american persimmon (ELMO) to my mother in law's yard last year (Claypool died a little over a week ago, if anyone didn't know)

I think my lowest last winter was 7 or 8 degrees. Pineapple lily (or maybe calla lily) has already popped the surface as well. two of my three poncirus (still very small plants) didn't even lose their leaves this winter.

I wish I had left my fig unwrapped. I scratched up one of the limbs covering it and time will tell if that's a problem (though I don't think it will be one)

I remember one of the (few) snowfalls we did have,as I drove the 10 or so miles west from my house that the snow totals more than tripled.

i'm planning on adding a pomegranite to my yard next (know just where to put it)

Lastly, all of my pawpaws are swelling buds (1st year all 7 have had buds on them). I'm as weary of the change in weather as you!

~Chills

Yep, I'm waiting to exhale as well. All the peaches are in full, dead bloom. I had not one peach last year out of four trees. No blooms. Frozen before they bloomed. Poor apple crop, too. Less than a bushel made it out of ten trees. The only tree fruits to make it were persimmon and a few plums.

We hit nearly ninety yesterday. It's forecast 32 Friday night with winds. Scary. It's easier to protect your trees with radiational frosts even if they tend to be more damaging than large, wintry air masses.

It's just a hold your breath and hope situation. Sometimes the forecasts miss it as much as five or six degrees, but it can be in either direction, unfortunately. LOL. My poor pantry is nearly bare of fruit, and I usually have so many bushels come canning season, we take the front end loader to push excess fruit into windrow, so it doesn't draw wasps into our work area.

I've got 33F and wind right now... Too close for comfort.

Frank:

I'd settle for 33F and wind. I'm 29F and no wind. Have a charcoal burner under the Comice tree and water running under the sweet cherries. At least it's 34F in the greenhouse. Heater comes on at 33F.

I think I'm going to be safe. The lows for tonight are mid thirties with warm weather returning thru next week. Three years ago, we lost just about all fruit with a mid April freeze. As I recall, the grape/wine industry was especially hit hard.

Brook

We had 29 with wind this morning. Supposed to be colder tomorrow morning, then a good warm up. Bush cherries have a few open blossoms along with blueberries, peaches are swelling but no open blossoms.

Peaches are swelling here, so i'm not too worried, just the apricots are flowering, which i covered with blankets. 35F right now, low of 30F but i'm just being cautious.

I expect some frosts after trees have budded out, which usually happens here in southeastern NY from early to mid April while frost is expected into mid-May. As was stated, it's when it gets below about 28 that blossums are killed.

Interestingly, less than 2 weeks ago we had a dagger frost of 18 and some apples were at half inch green. Thought I'd loose the cots and J plums for sure but they seem fine. At least the blossums are well tended by various bees and flys.

The last time the apple crop was lost in the Hudson Valley, we had a freeze well below 28 in late May. I remember that my sprayer was frozen up that morning. The next year we had a series of 90 degree days in March and trees were farther along than this year. The growers were expecting ruin but we didn't get a serious frost after the first week of April that year and the crop was the biggest in history. That was because the trees had been deflowered the year before.

In the year of the hard late frost, the only peaches I got were the earliest flowering ones, the tiny fruit are tougher than the flowers it seems. There's so much about the subject of freeze damage that we don't know. Sometimes being later flowering is a liability.

27F at the airport, and 29F in my backyard. I covered the apricots up, so hopefully that helped.

Central WI was a killer, with temps in the lower teens.

I'll add that all forecasts that i looked at were too HIGH. Most were off by about 3F or so.

Headed my way tonight, Frank. They originally said 32, now revised to clear and 29. I bet it's more like 26.

Yeah...plan for the colder readings and hope you get lucky. I'm guessing your trees are a little further along then mine. Everything looks great this morning, so i might have escaped unharmed. Better now then late April/or May. Tonite in the 40's and then a prolonged warm period.

I feel your pain. Upstate most years stone fruit are froze out. But it allows trees to grow and hopefully a produce bumper crop.

On Long Island we get a few light frosts after the Apricots bloom around March 30th. April 15th is our average last frost.

Had 27 at five o'clock this morning. Was 32 when I went to bed last night, a big layer of frost on the car windshield this morning. Oh well, do what you can with what you got left. We'll see what got hurt in a few days I suspect.

Jake

I'm hearing (from Accuweather.com) that tonight I should drop to 35 degrees.

Denninmi, 6 degrees difference is pretty dramatic considering we aren't that far (geographically) apart. I ran outside this morning and checked my nectarine blooms and they look ok (but I also ran back in afterwards, it was chilly)

I still want to start moving figs outside....

~Chills

Here are a couple of numbers for Michigan=

KDTW (Detroit airport) showing 31F
KARB (Ann Arbor airport) showing 31F
KLAN (Lansing airport) showing 31F
KPTK (Pontiac/Oakland airport) showing 29F

All min temps pumped out by the 12z GFS this afternoon... I would **assume** there shouldn't be any problems in that area of Michigan, except maybe frost pockets?

Looks like those were all too high..i see Ann Arbor was 22F! DTW was 30F and KLAN was 29F

The 32 we were forecast ended up edging down to 28 for a few hours and then dipped to 27, before edging up. We'll see if there's anything left down the road.

I saw Traverse City, MI was 26F... Hopefully not too much damage considering how much fruit is grown in that area. Maybe the trees will get naturally thinned this year!

Edging out of dormancy with warm days and low 20's just before dawn- Light skiffs of snow a couple of days in the past week, which is great. We need the moisture.

Buds are swelling everywhere, but only the pears are trying to bloom. The plum and apricot must be a week or two off, and the apple is just barely not dormant.

Crocuses and japanese iris are still blooming, lilacs are not there, and garlic is barely peaking through. Red wing blackbirds are nesting, robins are back, and osprey are reclaiming territory. Geese and ducks are on the nest, and the students are driving too fast.

It must be spring!

:-)M

27F on Thursday and 15 minutes of hail today. Not only that this was our first good rain of the year. The only thing predictable about our weather is that it will be bad.