In my zone if we can graft on chokecherry or anything that help on hardiness of the climate we will make a considarable step in the progress and this succes we badly need it because what is on the market is about all not made for in our place,fact is that the destruction of our trees by winter season breake the courage of many and teach to our children to keep away from it.This year was the worst winter season in 35 years and find something for our place is greatly necessary.I have made reaserch for what i say and the results of it are speaking.I bless every try or efforts that are made for even a drop to success in giving possibility to fruit trees to stay here alive adding lot of hapiness to many homes....

Growing most fruit from seed is a crap shoot. Peaches usually come close to the parent, or at least something desireable. Most citrus are polyembryonic, which means the seed has multiple embryos, making it possible that you will get the parent tree, or something close. Plums seem to be in the middle ground. Ive read greengage and other yellow/green plums will grow close to the parent. Japanese plums (especially the hardy ones) are usually crossed with the american plum (prunus americana (or prunus nigra/canadiensis)). They wont come too close to the parent tree. THe only way to ensure you get good "black ice" plums, is to get a tree, or at least get some scion. Ive read its possible to graft apricot to some plums (the asian types may do better, but thats a guess), and I think its possible to graft SOME japanese plums to european. I will say also, that you may not have much luck with peaches in s alberta. Ive lived in calgary. The thaw freeze cycles you get will probably make the trunk explode, or make it so you wont have fruit (the three years i was there, we had snow and frost into June. This means before, during and after flowering. THe best advice I can give if you decide to try peach (hell, I am!) is to make sure the trunk stays in the shade all winter, and that the tree stays cold until the threat of frost goes away. Even then its a slim chance, but who knows! You may have luck with "toka". Most sources state zone 3 or 4. Its a red japanese/american hybrid developed in south dakota, so it should be more able to survive the praries :D

We have snow and sleet in our Tuesday forecast, but the blooms haven't opened yet so maybe they won't freeze. Or, maybe it will freeze and I'll just have to hope for fruit from the other plum tree or the Mexican plum. Our low temps, even with snow and/or sleet, are only forecast to go to 29 on Tuesday but often we go colder than forecast. I actually hope this cold spell sticks around a while and slows down all the plants that are getting too eager too early. Telow, I am glad it works for you. It seems like we always have too much wind or rain at the same time the temps drop and I wouldn't be out there putting up heat lights. Tonight and tomorrow are supposed to be very windy here and Tuesday is supposed to be wet. I hope the trees blossoms aren't going to get too cold, but if they do, they do. Of course, if we get the hail that's in the forecast for the overnight hours tonight or early tomorrow morning, the hail might knock the blossoms off the tree. It seems like Oklahoma's weather has 101 ways to hurt the fruit crop some years, doesn't it? I guess that's why I am insanely happy when we do get fruit---because I remember all the years in which we don't. One year we didn't have extreme cold or hail, but had a dust storm come through with wind gusts in the 50s and 60s. No rain, no hail, but after the windstorm went through, most of the blooms and young fruit were on the ground. That's the first time I'd ever seen wind gust high enough to strip tiny plums off a tree. I don't know why it surprised me, though, because we had big power poles broken or tilting at crazy angles, power out, trees down, some people's roofs were torn off, and some folks' trampolines went airborne and traveled anywhere from maybe a hundred feet to hundreds of yards. Why would I think such winds wouldn't knock the small fruit off the trees? We've had really good plum harvests lately and I'm getting spoiled. In the early 2000s it was the opposite. We'd have warm winters and they'd flower and fruit early, and then we'd have the Easter cold spell, sometimes accompanied by snow, and the fruit would freeze and fall from the tree while still small. I have a friend who grows apricots here and gets a harvest about once every 6 or 7 years. Instead of worrying about the years he doesn't get apricots, he just enjoys the years when he gets them. I'm trying to emulate his good attitude, but I haven't planted an apricot tree here because I am afraid it would drive me crazy to lose the crop year after year.

Dorothy, I feel awful about your Montmorency cherry tree. It just breaks my heart to think that the ice storm got it. I keep hoping you'll post that you've noticed significant resprouting on the poor thing one of these days. We are getting rain and, as promised, I watched it rain, even stood out in the rain for a while, and would have enjoyed it even more if we hadn't been watching (on the news) and listening to (fire, police radios) the progress of the EF-4 tornado that hit Lone Grove. Then, as another potentially dangerous wave of severe weather approached our end of Love County about a half-hour after the tornado hit Lone Grove, we fled to the tornado shelter and sat there for about a half-hour while the rain and hail pounded us. When we came out of the tornado shelter, the yard was a lake with still-unmelted hail floating in huge puddles. We got 2" total on Mon. and Tues., and 3/4s of that fell on Tues. The rest fell on Saturday when we had a thundersleet storm. The rain is lovely, but we remain in a D2 (severe) drought. However, our Keetch-Byrum Drought Index, which predicts grassfire/wildfire intensity, dropped from just under 700 points (on a scale of 0-800) to just under 600 points which was a tremendous improvement. I was so relieved. I am not sure our KDBI has ever hit 700 and it was a milestone we didn't need to reach. Of course, fire danger remains very high as long as the grasses are dormant, and we still have had fires almost every day, but the FFs aren't having as much trouble stopping the fires now that the soil has a small amount of moisture in it and live fuel is not as likely to burn. Still, until significant spring green-up occurs, fire danger will be very high (or worse) on almost any day that rain doesn't fall. Eight inches! I think that here at our house we've had about 2.5" this year, but I am not complaining, because that's a lot more rain than we've had in quite some time. We are normally fairly dry in Jan. and Feb. anyway, so just 2" or 3" in those two months combined puts us at almost "normal" rainfall for the year-to-date. I hope I didn't jinx us by talking about being at almost "normal" rainfall for Jan./Feb.! It would be sad if we had to go weeks and weeks without significant rainfall again. Dawn