Late freeze damage?

[stevejr]

From what I have read & heard, most of the peach, apple, strawberry & other fruit growers have suffered almost complete loss of crop this year from this late Spring freeze.

I have two small peach trees that already had very small peaches growing and at first I thought that they were gonna be okay but now I can see where the very tips of the peaches are slowly turning a darker color and are softer than the rest of the peach...

My Crepe Myrtle tree and almost all of the Oak and Hickory trees took a hard hit...the new leaves are now dead, and I don't really know how quickly or fully they will recover this year...

I haven't been able to really tell about my two apple trees yet....I was sure looking forward to a good crop this year.

How did ya'll make out?

[Abhoth]

All's good in the Pac NW here... the bad nasty all headed east and it's messed up quite a bit but hey... someone will have crops and sell them for a higher price I'm sure. Don't envy those with the bad weather for sure!

[Herring]

My daffodil leaves had started to come up along the South side of the foundation of the house. They're all covered in snow again. Nothing else has even started yet so we're safe here so far. Hope it warms up soon, but the forecast for the next ten days is cloudy and sleet/snow/rain combo..... depressing.

The ground is still frozen solid quite deep; because we hardly had any snow, the ground was waterlogged and the temperature went down to -25°C for a while. No gardening here just yet.

Hope your trees are OK stevejr. If they are not part of your livelihood and they have no fruit this year, it may be a nice break for the trees as they won't have to use all that energy to create fruit.

[stevejr]

We had such a mild Winter ( thanks, Al Gore...it's all your fault!! ), that everything was blooming earlier than usual...I even commented to several people on how fast the trees and bushes & such were blooming and leafing out. I have a lot of Oak trees and literally hundreds of the acorns that had fallen from last year were sprouting up all around the trees...it was an amazing site! The freeze got most of them and that's okay since I didn't need all of them to keep growing but it sure was neat to see so many little Oak trees sprouting up!

My apple trees are bi-ennial ( a lot of apple trees are like this..producing a good crop every other year )...and last year was not very productive, and that's why I was hoping for a good crop this year. I'll just have to wait & see.

On another issue...have you heard how the honey bees are dying off in huge numbers?

[Herring]

Bees.... Scary situation. I was just reading this a couple of weeks ago
Bee article

edit: Albert Einstein quote: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

[stevejr]

Yea...the bee die off situation should be a grave concern to everyone. Our society and other high-tech societies have largely forgotten how their food winds up at their favorite grocery store. Something as small as the honey having such a vital role in food crop production is incredible.

"It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature" was a catchy add slogan some years ago but I fear that certain GM practices...as pointed out in the article that Herring linked to, could very easily backfire in a catastrophic way.

"It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature"!!

[Abhoth]

And so ... I'll continue to partake in a large urban garden, planting plenty of sunflowers and blanket flowers and other such bee attracting goods. And refrain from using Bug-be-Gone, thus promoting the good insects that take care of the bad...
And then there's the large flowering Black Locust we have here that draws the bumble bees in hordes! Me thinks I'll keep doing the same as usual...

[Herring]

I have noticed in the past couple of years that when our apple tree blossoms it is no longer covered in bees as it used to be. Until a couple of years ago, when it would blossom you could actually hear the tree buzz with the hundreds of bees, no I'm lucky if I can count 5 - 10 bees at once.

[stevejr]

Abhoth...some time ago I saw a really good program about the urban vegetable & flower gardens in New York City. People were taking abandoned lots between buildings and turning them into productive vegetable gardens and were able to help feed quite a few of the local folks who needed the extra help. One of the urban gardens had been in operation for quite a few years until a developer decided to put a building there. There was a huge uproar about it...the garden was destroyed...but ( acording to the show), the importance of the gardens, in fresh food production and in how it brings a community together for a common good ( feeding lots of folks), was finally acknowledged by the city.

Herring...I will certainly bee keeping ( ) a closer watch this year on my apple trees...

[maxximilian]

My peach and cherry trees took a beating....right as they were about to blossom....

And snow is in the forecast for tomorrow.....

Maybe the 'ice age cometh' folks are on to something.....

[stevejr]

Here is another article about the massive bee die off:

http://news.independent.co.uk/enviro...cle2449968.ece

The problem is spreading world wide. We may not have to worry about being wiped out by a nuclear war.....