Orchard disaster

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The thing I feared the most about this crazy warm weather happened this week. After a beautiful and warm February this week, the winter returned and was in full force. 
The warmth woke up my orchard and by the end of the last week, almost all of the trees were in full bloom. 
The plums started first then came to the cherries, peaches, even apples started forming buds.


The situation with berries was the same, blackberries started forming buds, raspberries are in full leaf production and red currants are already in full bloom.


Flowers also all woke up. Tulips, anemone, muscari, hyacinths. Everything is blooming.

And then on Sunday, we got the worst news a gardener could get. From the beginning of the next week, temperatures will be dropping below freezing point, with strong freezing north winds and snow.
The worst thing is that there isn’t much I can do about it. I covered most of my smaller-sized flowers like anemone and muscari but there isn’t much I could do with tulips and orchard trees. 


 I’ve collected all the young flowers and put them in the vase and the rest will have to be sacrificed and we’ll see what will survive.

I’m really not optimistic about my orchard. There is just no way the blooms didn’t freeze. Temperatures have been around -3°C and even if the flowers survived the cold the wind most definitely killed them. The temperature in the strong north wind, and we had it hitting with over 80km/h(50mph) was sure well below freezing. It’s very cold outside and the snow didn’t stick around to protect the plants. It was falling in the late morning and by the afternoon it was gone just in time to freeze the plants and then it started falling again.
This is the worst possible scenario for the orchard and I think that this year I’ll have no fruits. There could be some blackberries and raspberries, but other than that nothing.


I’m hoping this kind of weather will calm down in the next 24 hours and then we’ll see what’s left of the flowers, but I’m not hoping for much. Right now I’d be happy to see that the branches didn’t freeze and the damage will be only this year. It would be devastating to see that the trees have been damaged too.

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  1. Mal Avatar

    That is bad news. Hope you have had some respite from this now.

    I am getting ready for another spell of lighting the paraffin heater in my small greenhouse at night.

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