Homestead mailing list

["Lisa K.V. Perry" <lisakvperry AT gmail.com>]

On 4/9/07, EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net> wrote:
> Over the weekend, we had several nights in the mid 20's, and one night
> it got down to 21 degrees.  All the fruit trees have been affected.
> I'll be surprised if we get any apples, pears, peaches, nectarines or
> blueberries this year.  It sucks.  To add insult to injury, we are
> almost 8 inches under normal rainfall already, and we are barely into
> Spring...<sigh>
> How did the rest of you guys fare with this latest cold wave?


It was the same here, and it does, indeed, really stink. We have all of the
above fruit minus nectarines. This is our 7th Spring/Summer here and we've
always had fruit--some years less (particularly peaches), some years more,
but we've never had a year without blueberries. The last two years I picked
18 g. of blueberries and we go through them. Even in 2004. There was a late
frost that year on (or near) May 22 and most people in the county lost their
blueberries--but not us. Our microclimate is such that we stayed 2 degrees
warmer. We lucked out that year.

Another bummer was the Asian lilies had already come up and were about 6",
the muscari had just began blooming two days before the first night of
frost. My tulips had just opened. The delphinum recently emerged and were 4"
tall. Some bulbs that I planted the year before--that took an entire year to
do their thing before blooming the next year, those had just emerged as
well. It was too much to cover, so I took the "let Nature take its course"
tact--and wish I'd covered some stuff though it probably wouldn't have
mattered with 5 nights below freezing and 4 of them killing frosts.

It stinks! Guess this is why we appreciate the bumper crop years so much.
Why we make hay when the sun shines. But still....

Lisa
sw VA