Critical Temperatures for Fruit Blossoms
Mar 22, 2024
A Welcome Cold Spell
To my pleasant surprise, the weather has turned cold again for a week. A much needed shift as the apple buds were waking up far too quickly in the orchard. This weather will slow things down and lessen our chances of a blossom killing freeze.
There are still two months of nervous weather watching ahead. But every little bit helps.
If you want to play along at home in this high stakes game of bingo, check out the chart above. The jist is the more the blossoms open the more sensitive they are to cold damage. Crop loss starts getting measured at "10% kill" which is no big deal since you only need a very small percentage of blooms to pollinate for a full successful crop.
At "90% kill" that's when you starting looking for a day job to support your farming addiction.
Now you too can watch the radar and lie awake at night questioning your life choices over the past 20 years!
But I do love spring. The killdeer know it's here, but are maybe regretting returning to the farm a little too early for this icy week. I heard peepers filling the ponds all last week and have seen a couple dozen frogs bound back into the water to avoid my foot set steps. Even baby Zeke knows the seasons are changing and wants to stay up an extra hour in the evening, until the sun actually goes down.
Soon the blossoms and pollinators and birdsong will become too numerous to count.
Which reminds me, I need to get back to work. We're racing through the last of the pruning, prepping the greenhouse for new seeds, and the first 10 piglets just showed up this morning.
Every coming week will greet us with more baby animals, sprouting seeds, and blossoms that need tending.
An utterly wonderous, exhausting, and exquisite time to be alive. Whatever corner of the world you are in, remember to slow down and soak it. At least for a moment. It all moves so fast.
To my pleasant surprise, the weather has turned cold again for a week. A much needed shift as the apple buds were waking up far too quickly in the orchard. This weather will slow things down and lessen our chances of a blossom killing freeze.
There are still two months of nervous weather watching ahead. But every little bit helps.
If you want to play along at home in this high stakes game of bingo, check out the chart above. The jist is the more the blossoms open the more sensitive they are to cold damage. Crop loss starts getting measured at "10% kill" which is no big deal since you only need a very small percentage of blooms to pollinate for a full successful crop.
At "90% kill" that's when you starting looking for a day job to support your farming addiction.
Now you too can watch the radar and lie awake at night questioning your life choices over the past 20 years!
But I do love spring. The killdeer know it's here, but are maybe regretting returning to the farm a little too early for this icy week. I heard peepers filling the ponds all last week and have seen a couple dozen frogs bound back into the water to avoid my foot set steps. Even baby Zeke knows the seasons are changing and wants to stay up an extra hour in the evening, until the sun actually goes down.
Soon the blossoms and pollinators and birdsong will become too numerous to count.
Which reminds me, I need to get back to work. We're racing through the last of the pruning, prepping the greenhouse for new seeds, and the first 10 piglets just showed up this morning.
Every coming week will greet us with more baby animals, sprouting seeds, and blossoms that need tending.
An utterly wonderous, exhausting, and exquisite time to be alive. Whatever corner of the world you are in, remember to slow down and soak it. At least for a moment. It all moves so fast.
