The bloom was beautiful. Peaches and apples had prolific blossoms. The outcome of an orchardist’s crop, however, always hangs in the balance of one or two degrees on the thermometer. This year the 14th and 15th of April brought freezing temperatures overnight; 26 degrees on Tuesday night, the 14th, and 25 degrees on Wednesday night, the 15th. The peach crop was destroyed on Tuesday night and the apple crop was damaged on Wednesday night. To what extent the freeze damaged the apples is still to be assessed. Not all varieties were in full bloom so those trees look like some fruit survived but there is considerable damage to the trees that were in full bloom. The “king blooms” in these blooming varieties were killed but we are hopeful that some of the “secondary blooms” escaped the cold. Over the next week or so, we will be able to determine to what extent the losses are.
Since those two nights of freezing temperatures the weather has warmed up and the bees have been on pollination detail. Bees are interesting creatures. Watching their flight from the hives, the bees will not bother to “work” any trees in the orchard that has no live fruit bud. We can almost ascertain by watching the bees what varieties have survived and what varieties are completely destroyed. While the trees are still abloom with flowers, the embryos are dead and thus no pollen for the bees to collect. The bees’ keen sense of smell keep them moving on to where there is pollen for them to collect and take back to the hive.
Somewhat discouraged by the freeze damage, we however did not let it keep us from replanting parts of the peach and apple orchards. We replaced trees in the peach orchard that died from last year’s wet spring and we added several new varieties to the apple orchard that our customers have been requesting. Just have to keep moving forward and can’t let Mother Nature get the best of us.