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  • From: Maria Schumann <mariaschu@vtlink.net>
  • To: nafex mailing list at ibiblio <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [nafex] Early pruning
  • Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:51:06 -0400

We had 14 deg. F this morning. I covered my kiwis with old sheep fleeces which were heavy enough that they didn't blow away. We're hoping that the apples were in early enough bud development stage that they won't be totally hit. We'll see!

Maria
Greensboro, VT

On Mar 27, 2012, at 8:25 AM, Caren Kirk wrote:

Hey Steve,

This morning had to bundle the kids up in full snow suits that they
haven't worn for about 3 weeks. Even they were happy to put them on!

Feel like a doofus for pushing some of the mulch away from some of my
plants last week. Probably sentenced them to a death if not severe damage.

At least the wind has died down here. With the sunshine it actually
looks quite beautiful out. Shame it's -10 deg C!

Steve, as you said, we'll just have to see what survives and whether we
get any fruit at all!

Courage!

Caren.

On 3/26/2012 10:31 PM, Steve wrote:
I'm not covering anything. It's going to be too cold and too windy to
make any difference. Every time I check the forecast, it looks worse.
When they were predicting 12 degrees, I figured it was early and maybe
it wouldn't end up being nearly that cold. No such luck. Here's what the
national weather service has to say, now that Monday night is here:

"Clear, with a low around 3. Wind chill values as low as -8. North wind
between 6 and 10 mph, with gusts as high as 22 mph."

Those are Fahrenheit temperatures, of course. The only "precaution" I
took was to pick the daffodils that were in bloom and those showing
color in the buds. I fully expect that flowers, leaves and everything
will be killed to the ground. I really don't know what it will do to the
fruit trees. What a spring.

Steve (in the Adirondacks)


On 3/24/2012 11:04 AM, Caren Kirk wrote:
Steve,

As far as this list goes I'd say we're neighbours!

Did my pruning yesterday, there was a lot more green on the cuts than
usual although the buds were all still tightly closed.

Strange insects about with the warm weather, worried that could be a new
problem.

Not worried too much apart from the apricot, can't do much about it anyway.

I am going to vigilantly monitor the precipitation though. A couple of
years back we had a very dry, warm spring and I lost a couple of young
plants (including a young apple tree) and I strongly believe it was
through lack of water during the spring (never thought to water in
spring here previously). With the rapid melt and warm weather I feel it
could go that way again. But who know, it could rain all next week!

Good Luck for Monday, I've had a success protecting plants in the autumn
with sheets and blankets, don't know if that's a viable option for the
scale of your fruit production or if it even works in spring.

Caren

On 3/23/2012 12:13 AM, Steve wrote:
We live fairly close to each other. You could drive to my house is less
than 3 hours. After mid to upper 70s all week, I see the forecast low
for Monday night is 12 degrees F (about -11 C). The apples and American
Hybrid plums are showing green tips on the buds. The pears and European
plums mostly are not showing green.
Apples are so forgiving, I bet they will be OK. I'm not so sure about
everything else.

Steve in the Adirondacks


On 3/22/2012 1:49 PM, Caren Kirk wrote:
Steve,

I'm suffering the same weather pattern as you with astonishingly warm
weather beating all existing records by over 10 degrees C. Weathermen
say that it'll be over tomorrow but I'm stressed about getting my
pruning on the go all the same.

The yo-yo temperature pattern we experienced this winter seem to be
continuing. I wonder how it will affect all my fruits.

Caren Kirk
St. Jerome QC

On 3/19/2012 10:24 PM, Steve wrote:
On 3/18/2012 10:22 PM, Steve wrote:
On 3/18/2012 2:34 PM, sherwin wrote:
On 3/18/2012 12:49 PM, Steve wrote:
I'm thinking of going out and starting my pruning. It may not seem early
to some of you but it's early here. I usually wait until late April when
the chance of real cold weather is mostly over. I just checked and our
normal high and normal low for this date is 37 and 14 degrees F.
Today it's already 70 degrees and the lows for the rest of the week are
in the 40s. I think I'm going to start pruning, at least the apples,
right now, even though it could easily get into the single digits on any
given night for the next 3 or 4 weeks.
Does anyone think this is a mistake? Apples are pretty forgiving but
what about my pears and plums?

Steve in the Adirondacks

Steve,

As far as I know, the main requirement for pruning is that the
tree is dormant.
Otherwise, you are going to encourage more growth by pruning an
actively
growing tree. So it all depends on how soon you can get out to
prune, weather
permitting. With all this warm weather, if your trees have
already woken up, you
may want to postpone your pruning, or at least limit it. Cold
weather should not
bother a freshly pruned tree.

Sherwin Dubren in Illinois
The trees are still pretty dormant, very slight bud enlargement at the
very most. Actually, summer pruning would encourage less new growth, but
I'm not really worried about any of that on the apples.
I was more concerned about a sudden return to very cold weather causing
extra die back at the pruning cuts. Also some concern about the pruning
cuts being open longer since there may be no growth to start closing
them until May.

Steve
I'm going to add that the high today was 73, the record high for the day
(until now) was 63, and the record low for this date is 19 below zero.
Normal low is 15 above zero. It's going to feel like a real insult
when/if the temperatures return to normal. Steve
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