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  • From: "V. Michael Bove, Jr." <vmb@teakettlefarm.com>
  • To: nafex mailing list at ibiblio <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [nafex] Early pruning
  • Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:01:22 -0400

21F this morning when I got up. Myrobalans, black apricots, peaches, Nanking cherries blooming like mad, but I'm not expecting a lot of fruit from them... (trifoliate orange blooming, too, but it won't be a bad thing if I don't get a lot of fruit from that -- there are only so many whisky sours one can drink).
Michael Bove
Teakettle Farm, Z6 (MA/RI border)

On Mar 27, 2012, at 9:51 AM, Maria Schumann wrote:

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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