This Year's crop ( escapees )

[Bowsnbucks]

I was just at camp yesterday to spray weeds/grass around the cages and do some mowing. It seems the varieties that escaped the late frosts the best were All-Winter-Hangover, Trailman, Dolgo, Centennial and Hyslop crabs, plus Liberty, Enterprise and Goldrush apples. Our 2 Kieffer pears have fruit and the Morse hybrid pear does too, although it looks to be a much smaller round pear.

I pulled some of the apples off the trees to give more energy to tree growth. This will be our first fruit on the Liberty and Enterprise. Anxious to try them come fall !! Our best growers ( size-wise ) seem to be the Enterprise, N.Y. 35 " Bonkers ", and Wolf River. Put some clothes pins on some new young limbs on some of the trees, and snipped off new competing " leader " wanna-be's. All in all, trees are looking pretty good.

What are you guys' best prospects for this season ??

 

[Merle Hawggard]

Glad to here you'll have some in spite of all the late cold y'all had this spring. My trees are for the most part pretty young so I pinched off the few I had except for some of my crab trees. I'll probably let some make next year.

 

[Don'tWorryIHuggedItFirst]

98% of our crop is gone. Worst year in 15 years. Stupid frost...

 

[JERRED GRACEY]

most of my fruit trees back home are young and this should have been first year they should have put on some apples and pears, had a few last year, kind of glad they got hit with frost multiple times, no fruit hopefully they grow better because of it

 

[Maya]

I am going to be ok. Thank God my Honeycrisp did well and everything else did pretty darn good. The only things on the light side are Macs, Honeygold and Zestar!. But they have a crop. Keep an eye on them, one thing I always do is underestimate early on. My wife always yells at me, "you're going to give me a heart attack, this is more than you said last month"! Better than the other way around I guess. By now though I can usually tell within 10-15% the amount we will have.

I was working up in the Honeycrisp this AM and never would have thought there was as many as there is a few weeks ago. I didn't spray to thin them but ended up doing more hand thinning than I thought I would have to.

The deer apples at camp look ok.

 

[CrazyEd]

For me the only survivors were Goldrush and Frostbite, and I have less than a dozen apples on those 2 trees. Everything else took a full nuking which includes many of the varieties you mentioned. I think we hit 24 during full bloom.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Several guys on this thread and a couple others said their Goldrush are doing well despite late frosts. I guess I'll have to get a couple more for camp ( although I said we were done planting apples !! ). Our Goldrush are flourishing at camp even with late frosts there too. I'm impressed with them, and last year we had a couple trees put on their first couple apples - DELICIOUS !! All of our crabs seem unaffected by the late frosts.

 

[willy]

The only trees to have fruit on them after our late hard frosts this year are Liberty and Hewes crab. They have been producing since year three. The other 5 varieties planted at the same time have produced sparingly in the past 4 years. It seems an orchard of Hewes and Liberty on my place would have been the way to go but someday hopefully the others show me I'm wrong. None of my pears have fruit this year that normally do. It seems the late frost wiped them out.

 

[doublelunger]

I live in Lansing, MI and my backyard orchard barely escaped the spring frosts other's received. On May 15th the low temp at my house was 33.2, the 16th it was 32.7, and on May 23rd it got down to 36.3. All of my varieties are looking great and there appears to be no frost damage, a few degrees lower on any of those dates and I'd be singing a much different tune...

 

[woodduck]

Lucky for me the only late frost we had didn't seem effect anything apple wise. Everything was already putting on fruit. Most of my wild apple trees that are scattered around the farm are pretty full. My grafted varieties are all to young to produce yet but I am very impressed with how much growth my 2nd leaf Chestnut crab is putting on. I lost a 2nd leaf Enterprise to apple borers....hopefully no more of that goes on.

 

[Dan Wombles]

I have 20 different antique varieties that are producing, and only two survived the frost, pitmaston pineapple and harrison. The rest had 75-100 % loss.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Sorry to hear that Dan. I've seen pix of your trees and they're beauties, so they'll be back strong next year, I'm sure.

I think many of us got nipped to some degree this spring by late frosts. Hopefully that will only give more energy to grow more wood on our trees.

Woodduck - Our Chestnut crabs at camp seem to be very good growers too. Each year they put on good wood. Can't wait to taste some of them !!