I offer you commiseration although I do have a scattering of crop potential- and not what I would have expected. I only have a few apple trees with any crop at all but a couple of my plums are almost adequately fruited and there might be enough peaches for me and mine- mostly on early varieties. I would have expected the later flowering apples to handle the cold better. I suggest you focus on summer pruning to keep light where you want your fruit (and on spurs) and do not give trees any N if you were planning to. Anything that reduces vigor will be helpful for full sized trees. Your peaches in particular should be kept down as they grow like nuts when they have no fruit. Been many years since I've had to observe this. The orchards I manage are showing a poor apple crop, even on sites protected from hard frost. I think last summers monsoon combined with early warm spring followed by wet cool drastically reduced crop even on many trees not burned by hard frost. Stored energy was reduced by monsoon and used up by early warmth but before trees could recoup the sun vanished so they abandoned flowers. Anyway, that's my theory. Cornell is advising growers to consider installing frost protection because of possible permanent climate change.

It was very cold here and we had a very hard frost....the kind that looks like white snow on the grass. It was 34 degrees here at 2:00 a.m., and I didn't check the temperatures any more after that because I knew it was going to be worse than expected.....and, at that point, the only issue was how much worse than expected. (G.M., When I saw our temps. at 2 a.m., I checked Carter County's on the internet and y'all were showing 38 degrees at that point, so I'm betting y'all ultimately went down to at least 34 to 36.) Pretty much everything in the garden survived and most were not damaged. I have two tomato plants that probably won't make it, but that's not bad considering I had 58 in the ground. There's about another 10 that show some damage. I probably could leave them alone and they'd bounce back, but I might replace them anyway. I have back-up plants to replace them with, so it isn't a big deal. The damage to the tomatoes was hit or miss, and might have been worse on those whose flower pot/bucket was smaller or more lightweight than those on the other plants. Everything else tender was in the house, the garage or the screened-in back porch so they all are fine. All the perennials are fine. The roses that were blooming look fine. The iris flowers look kind of pitiful. The water lilies are unharmed. Depending on how cold it actually got, and how long it stayed there, the fruit on the fruit trees may not survive. We have one more cold night tonight here in southern OK, with "patchy frost" expected. If you believe the data from the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, the "average" last frost in Love County occurs in the March 22 thru March 31st timeframe. However, we ALWAYS have at least one freezing night significantly later than that, and usually more than one. Here's the last frost date for the years we've lived here: 2007: 32 degrees on 4-15-07 2006: 23 degrees on 4-23-06 2005: 32 degrees on 4-24-05 2004: 32 degrees on 3-31-04 2003: 28 degrees on 4-10-03 2002: 27 degrees on 4-05-02 2001: 32 degrees on 4-24-01 2000: 31 degrees on 4-17-00 1999: 31 degrees on 4-18-99 So, the OCS data doesn't seem reliable for us, but it is based on 30-year averages, and we've only been here and watching the weather here for 9 years. One frustrating thing about the "late" freezes is that, even though they predictably occur in mid- to late-April, they often follow anywhere from 4 to 8 weeks where we've had really nice warm weather and only a couple of cold nights. Randy, I think your wind will be worse than ours. We're only expecting winds of 15 to 25, which seems mild compared to the last few days. It is relatively wind-free here today, and that is nice. Kirts, I hope your ground dries up soon so you can rototill and prepare to plant. We have another round of rain forecast beginning around Thursday. I hope to get the rest of the veggie garden planted this week, except for the real heat lovers like okra and melons. My soil is still pretty wet just a couple of inches below the soil surface, but it is getting better every day. Dawn

Definitely a real head scratcher, KennsWoods. LOL! I will look more closely at the leaves tomorrow but I haven't noticed any bugs out there and I've spent some time examining this tree the last few days for sure! I did look for signs of mildew and saw none. We've had average rainfall the last couple of months, so I don't think it's a problem with either too much or too little water. Nothing else seems to be having water issues, not even things we put in this year. April was super wet. Maybe this is a delayed effect from that? Last winter was weird, for sure. It seemed like it was 75 one day and 15 the next during much of January. But 75 isn't all that uncommon in January here and the cold snaps didn't last more than a day or two. We had some sleet a couple of times, which is extremely unusual, but I don't think that caused this problem. I was wondering about that "disorganized mess" with the trunks. LOL! All the (what we call) Japanese Magnolias I've seen are multi-trunked but that does seem like it could use some thinning. I'll read that article you linked, Logan, and will give the whole issue of pruning more thought tomorrow when I have time too. I'm guessing if we thin, we should do that late next winter? I hope I didn't miss anything that needed a response. I'm in a rush but didn't want to ignore any of you nice people who are taking time to help!

We had our first killing frost, too, Friday night/Sat morning, here in NEOK 6a. But I was ready for the garden to be done, and it wasn't producing much anymore, anyway. Next year I'll do some stuff different, I say that every year. Failures are learning opportunities. You'd think by now I'd have it all figured out LOL. I have heard of some people putting christmas lights in their fruit trees that have bloomed and then a late spring frost looms. Never tried it myself, so I don't have an opinion on how well it works. I know that the Livesay peach folks in Porter, more central in OK and in zone 7, use smudge pots and sometimes they have helicopters stirring up the air above it all. Would be kind of hard for the average home gardener to do that though. The bugs and birds don't leave me enough fruit to defray that expense. My parents would sometimes go out and hose down everything in the wee hours of the morning. Tried that once and got cold and soaking wet before my hose froze. Not doing that again.