For me...i'm getting rid of the in ground peaches. Not worth the space in my (what i consider) small lot. Space would be much better utilized for apples. I'm interested in what the apricots and sweet cherries do. With this weather i'll need to wait until 2 weeks. Going to be sweet cherries in mid July this year at the rate we are going.

To show how different zone 6's are, all my trees are still dormant, which is good, as it's snowing right now! This should be the last couple days of freezing weather, and all my trees are still dormant enough not to really be bothered by it. Doesn't matter much as they are so young, i don't really expect a crop this year anyway.

Drew, that is a pretty good point as far as the unreliability of zones to determine how cultivars will perform. It is all catalogs usually provide for guidance.

It is even more complicated, apparently, then just a question of risk of late frosts- Olpea seems to suffer killing of peach flowers at temperatures much less extreme than what we can generally take in NY. I'm thinking this is most likely because of greater fluctuations of temps, but we get our share of winter thaws. Wind may be a factor as well. So many variables, so little actual scientific evaluation.

The cold came in this morning, but it's going to take time to determine how much damage occurred to blooms and post blooms. Lows were pretty spotty. Lows around the area ranged from 29F (here at the house) to 26F in some areas.

MSU indicates damage starts at 27F for bloom and 28F for post bloom, but I believe their temps are based on 30 min. intervals at those temps. I've found most blooms aren't quite as hardy as they report, probably because the low temps typically last longer than 30 min. here.

Of course there are varietal differences in bloom hardiness as well.

Good chance you didn't sustain horrific damage. Hopefully it just thins you a little.

Do you weather station on your farm (that records max/min)?

I had 26F here, but we had some clouds around. We also still have a little snow on the ground from the inch and a half we got yesterday.

"Do you have a weather station on your farm (that records max/min)?"

Frank,

That's the thing, I don't have a weather station at the farm, so don't know exactly how cold it got.

I've tried to look at the surrounding areas nearby this morning from the NWS and news but it's really hard to tell. From nearby areas, I'm guessing it maybe got down to 29f out there? Not sure though. I need to get a decent min/max thermometer out there.

A couple years ago I was going to outsmart the weather in a spring freeze. We had blooms covering the Reliance.

So I took a lawn sprinkler and put under the tree, and ran it all night. I think it got down to 23 to 25F. I should have known what happens when you have ice freezing on trees. Two of the 3 main branches split down the middle, and fell to the ground.

I still had peaches on the remaining branch. Those peaches were consumed by Japanese Beetles. There were no peaches for #1.

On Tuesday at 6AM it was 27 degrees here, and it stayed there for hours by 4PM it was 32. Now at 11PM it's back to 27 degrees. If anything were blooming they would be gone.
I'm worried my rain barrel is going to crack! A low of 20 degrees tonight. We better get used to these cold winters, as it's expected to last 20 years.

Olpea,

Do you market any peach products, such as juice that is juiced out of your peaches.

And if you do so, where do you take peaches for juicing.

I see you are just south of KC. It seems like a good area to market fruit.

Mark,

I don't sell any juice/jam type products from peaches.

I've tried to juice peaches and product I came up with is too thick for my taste. I don't like that thick texture. I know Michael357, on this forum, juices a lot of his peaches.

Part of the problem with selling processed products is that the price is generally lower while the time and cost of processing is higher, at least for someone like me.

I see people selling jam/jelly at the Farmer's Market and don't understand how they make it work. I've made a good bit of jam/jelly for my family and it takes a lot of time.

I think the apple juice market survives because juice apples are lower quality and/or surplus, so growers couldn't sell them at all if it wasn't for juice. Now China controls the apple juice market anyway and they can produce apples dirt cheap for that market. There is little cost in producing apples when labor is only making 5 bucks/day.

China has most of the frozen apple juice market but in states with a lot of apple production "cider" is still a big money maker at farm markets- local is also available in many large grocery stores around here- they make a point of stocking it in Fall.

A small apple grower I do some consultation and a ton of pruning for (Thompson's Cider Mill) sells "gourmet" cider. Has a lot of Golden Russet and N. Spy in the formula.

He must be getting 4 or 5 bucks for a half gallon now, and shucks, if he didn't have to pay me so much he'd almost be breaking even. He doesn't produce nearly enough apples for this to be a money maker- less than 10 acres. State law requires pasteurization, which has put a lot of smaller producers out of business.

Few thoughts:

I don't currently grow any fruit, but I did back in Ohio (90s/early 00s):

Olpea - I found that the blooms were a bit MORE freeze-tolerant than those MSU charts. I saw some cropping even after lower 20s on peaches, but it was a very brief shot - it was 30F at 3am, 23F at 7am, and back to 40F by 9. They also weren't completely open, and I think the blossoms that ended up setting were the ones that were still closed at the time of the freeze.

I lost all my trees in the '94 freeze in Akron, OH (-25F), but I think my low lying yard at the time was closer to -30. Some orchards around me lost crops but trees survived, believe it or not, that year.

We fared well here in MD for this week's freeze. We have been colder, so things aren't as advanced, and it didn't freeze as hard, either. Peaches are JUST coming into bloom, and most areas closer to the cities and/or the water didn't get below 29 or 30 at the coldest. Some more outlying areas might have touched the mid 20s, but the trees in those areas are also a few days behind, so I think damage is minimal.

However, one place in the Shenandoah Valley in VA reached the teens Wed. night.

Planted 4 varieties of peach here in MN last year, bare root from Stark Bros., 1 each, Contender, Intrepid, Reliance, and Blushingstar. We had the coldest winter here since '78-'79 (great timing by me) my back yard dipped below -30. We did have an exceptional amount of snow cover and I covered the base of each tree with several inches of oak leaves for protection before the first snow, so,we'll see. snow's gone now, I'm leaving the leaf cover to delay the ground warming around the roots and hopefully delay bloom. Pruned the other day and I think I see signs of life and all are alive but not sure yet. The next couple weeks will be interesting!

Went out this morning to take another look at the peach trees. When I take a cutting from any branch on my apple trees the wood is green everywhere. No sign of green on any of the peaches. Not looking good.

Thanks for the info olpea. I just checked my peach, which is going into its third season. It is covered in buds that look like they're about to bloom, and I have yet to spray. Is it too late?

Thanks for the report mhayes. Please post back. I'm always interested in accounts from cold areas like yours and the account hairmetal mentioned.

Caryltoo,

If you are referring to leaf curl, I think there still may be some benefit to spraying at this late juncture. If it were me, I would go ahead and spray a leaf curl spray.

Lastly, as another addendum to winter peach bud hardiness, Carolina Gold ended up performing well in my backyard where most of the cold winter damage occurred. I suppose this should be expected, as the more recent focus of the N. Carolina breeding program has at least been in part on cold tolerance (i.e. Challenger and Intrepid).

In summary, the varieties which bloomed well in my backyard were: Contender, Encore (which also did well at the farm), Carolina Gold, and PF7a.

I figured with my 4 failed peach trees I should cut off all the dead wood and get to some green wood in hopes they'll bounce back. No matter how close to the trunk I go there is no sign of green wood. This is probably a dumb question however I have no experience with peaches, should I expect to see green wood on cut peach limbs/branches? Everything else I prune (blueberries, apples, grapes etc.) the cut wood is nice and green inside. Thanks for any help

Yes I think you should expect to see some green cambium if the tree is still alive, so perhaps not a good sign.

I lost some young peach trees this winter. Of the ones I lost, some of them started with some green cambium but as time went on during this warm up, the green cambium has turned brown with the bark slowly shriveling.

This has happened before on trees I've lost for other reasons. The cambium will start out green but I think the green is slightly paler than normal and slowly turns brown. I'm convinced the trees were dead before spring, but the final symptoms of death hadn't yet set in.

Some people in colder climates have reported their peach trees leafed out very late after a particularly harsh winter, so you may want to give your peach trees more time.

Thanks for the response olpea. I'm going to try again this year but do 3 things differently. 1. Stop fertilizing mid to late Aug and greatly decrease the watering in Sept./Oct. to try to encourage dormancy. 2. Plant all the peach trees in a relatively close group so I can cover them and even possibly heat them on severely cold nights or in case of early bloom. 3. My Nectarine tree coming tomorrow will be potted in a 32 gallon pot so I can dolly it into my garage for the winter, (wheel it out to sit on the blacktop driveway on decent days.)
If this doesn't work, well, theres always Costco.

I have no buds swelling on any of the 20 reliance or red haven I planted last fall. I think it was the wrong year to try fall planting. Buds are swelling on all of the tart cherries, except 3 of 10 Balaton, and apples I planted last fall.

Jag-

same here..im seeing a lot of leaves pushing on my peaches, but no flowers swelling. I also not seeing and swelling on the Japanese plums (just leaves)...on the other hand the hybrid plums should be full of blooms and the cherries (even the sweets) look good...

mhayes-

That is a large pot. Just make sure you use a light potting mix or that thing will weigh a ton (sometimes you got to man handle them, even with the dolly)...i have probably 30 stonefruit (various) in pots...everything in the garage (unheated/attached, but poorly insulated --it was below 0F in there many times according to our van) is swelling (should flower any day)..the pluots are full, the plums, the peaches, the donuts...

Frank, thats interesting, what size pots do you generally use? Can you get halfway decent lifespan/yields from the potted trees? I'm starting to think that even tho there are several peach varieties approved for my zone, its not very realistic to expect to get them thru these winters alive or through the cold springs with fruit intact. Maybe pots are the way to go

15 gallon....couple of pluots in whiskey barrels, which i don't recommend.

{{gwi:61918}}
Just some of them...

Lifespan? I think you could probably keep them going for a long time. What does happen over time, is the soil level slowly drops, so what I do is just pull the whole rootball right out and add some more soil to the bottom. You could also root prune (do it dormant) and you must prune branches back to get new fruit wood. One of my white peaches has been in a pot for 4 years and has done fine. This year i hacked it back hard to get some new branching. Yield? From a 15 gallon pot I think with my peaches, i had probably a dozen very large ones...what the issue is there is the squirrels will go after them.

You must water often once the weather turns warm. Like every day (at least for me, but my soil my be more draining). You must feed a few times through out summer.

Nice little picture from MSU of what i'm seeing (left pic) on all my outdoor peaches...

{{gwi:90553}}

Frank, thanks for the perfect picture. 90% of my Elberta peach looks like the picture on the left. The tree is over five years old and might have 30 peaches on it before thinning. My Belle of Georgia white peach looks like the pic. on the right (also my Chinese peach and my Early Crawford). Thanks so much.

Looks just like my 3rd leaf Redhaven on the left. 8th leaf Reliance in full bloom now, hoping the ovaries survived too! Thanks for the pic. Frank.

Just looked over my peaches again...still nothing happening, but most of them have started pushing out leaves. What i have found exciting is that i'm almost 100% sure that the Satsuma is going to at least try to flower! Seeing a lot of flower buds swelling.

With the cold spring, things have been a bit compressed.

Bloom starts:
4/17- Tomcot apricot
4/19- White River peach (the one which bloomed 1 week prior to others for Olpea)
4/21- Montrose apricot
4/22- Satsuma and Superior plums, and Harlayne apricot. Most of the Honeyberries are also open, though I didn't catch when it first happened.
4/23- NJF 16 and Encore peaches
4/24- Most of the rest of the peaches now have open flowers, except PF1 and PF Big George

The Euro pears are at first white and Asian pears are at full white. Most of the apples are at tight cluster, with Hudson's Golden Gem being the furthest along. Pomme Gris, Court Pendu Plat are both way behind, somewhere between silver tip and green tip. Mother is just a bit ahead of them.

I have been holding off adding to this report hoping some flowers would somehow burst forth on my peach trees, but I don't think it is gonna happen.

Usually my peach trees blossom about the last week of April, although one year I recall not it not starting until about the 29th. After this killer winter, I have only 2 blossoms about to open on one (an Encore) of my 3 approx 20y old trees. The three peaches and a nectarine planted last year have none either. All are leafing out for the past week.

Other trees are fine. I planted 4 Japanese plums last year and each has had a few flowers-Methley on 4/16, the Ozark Premier, Santa Rosa and Starting Delicious in the past 3 days. The 2 Montmorency cherries planted last year also started blooming late last week. My older Green Gage plum started blooming profusely a few days ago. The pears and apples are in good shape, with flower buds visible all over.

I have had 2 years with no peaches in the last 20, both where the trees bloomed but extensive sub-freezing cold during the bloom and shortly after was the cause, when the trees were much younger. I have never had a loss of virtually all peach blossoms before. I have never had a winter like this one either. We had 2 days where it did not get above 0, we had more days with temps under 0 than I have ever seen, and the low was -14. My trees are on a hilltop where they do get a lot of wind as well.

This post was edited by eboone on Fri, Apr 25, 14 at 16:24

Eboone-

Yup...same here. Nothing for peaches, except the container peaches. The plums look good. Everything else looks fine. Here was my winter...

{{gwi:90554}}

eboone, sorry to hear that and somewhat surprised that you didn't have similar lows in at least a few winters early in the lives of those peach trees. Here in SW NY the bloom seems fine on all varieties except a couple of West Coast peaches, but I don't think we got below about -12. This used to be around our average low until the 21st century.

However, I don't ever remember, even on the most extreme winters, having days that didn't get at least into the higher single digits. In 25 years growing peaches here the only time winter temps froze out peaches it got down to -22 on two occasions.

I still have no swelling of any kind on my 20 new reliance or red haven. No leaves or buds. Some of them still have green tissue underneath, but nothing is happening. Everything else has leaves now.

Jag,

I was happy when my Red Baron peach bloomed a week ago. There were only about a 3rd of the flowers bloomed and the rest were toast by the -15F. The contender, Flat Wonderful, Belle of Georgia,and Red Haven peaches had no damage. Plums, Pluots, Paw paws, Carmine Jewel cherries, and Asian pears are blooming right now. The American Persimmons just showed green tips. Honey berries and Apricots were the first to bloom and formed fruitlets. Jujubes are still dormant. I wish this cold cycle goes away for ever. Wishful thinking!

Tony

This is so suprising to me, that Tony has trees that bloomed last week and are in bloom now and I'm still waiting to have my peaches blossom and my other trees show blossom buds. I thought you would all be way behind my zone. Mrs. G

Mrs.G,

The weather has been awesome the last couple of weeks in the 70's and 80's. I did a bunch of stone fruit grafts (Winblo, Foster, Robada, Orange Red, Hesse, 4 more Flavor King, and the scions buds starting to show some green tip. I still have a bunch of Asian persimmon woods from UC Irvine to be grafted. I hope to graft at least 3 or 4 true Fuyu the USDA got from Japan,

Tony

This post was edited by tonytran on Sat, Apr 26, 14 at 23:11

Tony---huge difference in weather this month between you and me...you being on the warm side, me on the garbage side...even worse as you go north of here (Lake Superior still full of ice))....now the forecast is all 50Fs and rain for the next 5 days. I'm still not at bloom on anything.

Tony that is fantastic. I think I'll try to get scion for OrangeRed apricot for next year. Fruitnut says it is the best. I will be grafting this week.

My weather is far from as bad as Frank's (ugh horrible) but no bloom here either. The only things open are early magnolia. Mrs. G

Any of you cold weather folks ever remove the leaves from your trees in the fall to try and encourage dormancy and hardening off before the severe cold hits? Thanks

I never have. In my area we have plenty of chill hours and cold that easily takes care of the leaves. Dormancy is not a problem in RI. IMO, Mrs. G

Franktank, I hear ya on the weather. (I'm near Madison.) I'm trying to stay positive, all this cold weather means the stuff that does bloom might not get frosted. I'd really like cherries this year.

I've only got one peach planted, a 1-yr-old seedling barely 1 ft high. I wasn't sure it'd survive since I didn't cover it, but we got some good snow cover. It's in a 18" high raised bed (clay soil over here, not sand like Franktank). It's pushing leaves, even the stem areas that were exposed to -22F for days at a time. It's a seedling from a local white peach (bought at Olbrich Gardens Iris plant sale, so I haven't tasted it.) So, I guess we will see how it fares the next few years!

I only have 2nd leaf peach trees, and it looks like any possible fruit buds were killed. Not a big deal as I was going to remove all but one or two fruit anyway. One that might have fruit is Indian Free, which is ironic since it needs a pollinator. It's possible my nectaplum has viable buds, and could pollinate. If that happens, I'm keeping the seeds, And Indian Nectaplum sounds like a cool tree!
Both trees are starting to show some bud growth. My other peaches are leafing out. Which concerns me in the future. I may need a late blooming peach to pollinate Indian Free.
A strange year, so hard to tell, young plants too, so time of blooming may adjust as they figure out the local climate. I have seen that with other plants.
My cherries are at my cottage and I have no idea as ferry services are late due to lake ice. I have not been up there yet. During the last 10 years I would have the place open and running by now! I'm going Thursday to connect the water, and other opening procedures.

I have 2 contender peach trees, they both look dead after the hard winter, last year and the year before did really well. I have not cut them down yet, and I have new grow at the base of them, should I cut the dead off and let them grow from the bottom?

How far from the bottom? If it is just sprouts from the rootstocks then the peaches will not be true to the variety.

All depends on if its above or below the rootstock. If its below, id probably either graft it over (if possible) or remove and replace.

they are above the ground,

Please post a photo. It's hard to tell unless we can see.

here are pics

and the other one

Wow...that tree was totally zapped. I'd say you have root stock growing there and you would need to graft over a known variety. If not dig it and toss, replace.

It's hard to tell from pics, but the rootstock suckers look like some type of plum/hybrid. Probably not something very edible.