North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Mark & Helen Angermayer" <hangermayer@isp.com>]

Here in east Kansas it looked like the freeze a couple weeks ago nulled any
chance for fruit.  Now it looks like we could have some pears.  Someone on
the list mentioned plants can re-bloom.  It looks like that's what happened
to the pears.  Our Red Bartlett was in full bloom when the worst freeze hit
(4-8).  It didn't look like any flowers made it through the freeze, but the
tree sent out some blooms after the freeze.  As of yesterday there was one
full bloom still on the tree.  So we may yet have a good curculio crop after
all.  Blackberries are re-foliating and sending up new canes.  Strawberries
coming back.  Our strawberries were hit much worse than others in the area.
I think this is because last fall I did some corrective fertilizing.  The
strawberries emerged with a lot of lush tender growth that was very
susceptible to freeze damage.

Planted some persimmon and paw paw this spring.  Someone mentioned they had
serious twig dieback of persimmon because of the frost.  Perhaps that's
what's going on with the persimmon and paw paw, as there is no new growth
coming back.  The trees may be dead.  They were pretty small.

Apricot foliage was damaged worse on the Hargrand (100% damage), but it's
putting out new foliage as are the japanese plums.

Mark
Zone 5b