Dawn,

How big is the tree? My grandparent's had a few small plum and apricot trees and, a few years ago, they bloomed early. They saved the fruit by throwing some quilts over the top of the trees on the nights when a freeze was expected.

Reed,

It is pretty big and it would take a mighty large quilt. It is a fairly mature tree, pruned into a nice bowl shape, but about 10' tall and about 15' wide. It produces a heck of a lot of plums. In a good year, not counting what we eat fresh and give away, I make 100-300 half-pints of plum jelly.

I religiously thin away about 90-95% of the fruit that sets and it still produces like mad. It just so happens that the last couple of years we got cold early in fall so it really had its chilling requirements met probably by late December. When we had several days in a row last week with highs in the upper 70s, I knew that it would bloom early, but this early is ridiculous.

Stone fruit trees here are trickier than they were in Fort Worth. Down there, we usually warmed up and stayed warm and didn't lose the crop to late freezing weather as often. Up here we are more prone to swing back and forth from an early warm-up to a late cold spell and back again, over and over and over.

The way it normally works here at our house is that they bloom way too early and we lose all the fruit one year out of three, they bloom a tiny bit too early and we lose part of the fruit one year out of three, and we lose none of the fruit the final one year out of three. However, we had a great harvest in 2009, 2011 and 2012, so you're not gonna hear me complaining if we lose the crop in 2013. It is, statistically, about time to lose the crop again.

If a freezing night approaches after we have fruit, I'll see if I can rig a boat tarp or floating row cover over it. It will depend on how windy it is.....sometimes very cold weather comes with so much wind that you cannot cover the trees.

I am pretty much resigned to losing the fruit this year. It's okay. I made a ton and a half of plum jelly last year. The second plum tree often doesn't bloom as early as the first one does since it needs more chilling hours, so often it still will produce even if the first one freezes. Then, if they both bloom too early, I have the native Mexican Plums that tend to bloom a bit later. They are too small for fresh eating, but make great jelly.

Living here, I'm using to fruit trees losing their minds and blooming early. Two years out of three something blooms too early and pays the price for doing so. We just move on and enjoy whatever good stuff we get from everything else. I do want to plant some more plum trees with higher chilling hours if I can find them. That will help in hot winters.

Dawn

Dh and I went out to prune fruit trees the other day and saw that our plum blooms are swelling too. I don't know what kind of plums these are. It was a seedling from daughter's place. It has green plums and we seldom get a crop. Not even 1 in 3 years.

Dorothy, Is the reason you don't get a crop because it always blooms too early?

The only green plum I'm personally familiar with is Green Gage, and it is an erratic bearer and it seems to benefit from having another European plum to cross pollinate it.

Does your daughter's tree produce well and, if so, is there another plum there that could be cross-pollinating it?

What I really need desperately is for a strong cold front to come down and cool down this tree's urge to bloom and I need for it to happen yesterday. So, guess it isn't going to happen. As much as the blooms are swelling, I think they are past the point of no return, and it doesn't help that it is 75 wonderful degrees here right now.

Since it seems highly unlikely we've had our last freezing night already, I feel fairly resigned to seeing the flowers or fruit freeze sometime in the next month. I'll miss the fresh plums, eaten warm from the tree with juice dripping down my chin, but as far as plum jelly goes, I have a pantry full so it isn't quite a crisis situation.

Dawn

It could be lack of pollination some years, but most years it just blooms too early. We have a Santa Rosa Plum that has been in the ground only a couple years, so hope to someday get plums.

This idea only works if the weather is cold but dry. I keep several clamp on lights with heat lamp bulbs in them and I clamp them on to the lower limbs of the tree on cold nights. I dont bother if the weather in a day or two is predicting snow or sleet but if it remains dry I never fail to get fruit from 5 or 6ft. from the bulb and its worth it to me to get some fruit as opposed to none. I would cover the tree with visqueen or something but inevitably the wind is blowing 30mph. It works.

We have snow and sleet in our Tuesday forecast, but the blooms haven't opened yet so maybe they won't freeze. Or, maybe it will freeze and I'll just have to hope for fruit from the other plum tree or the Mexican plum. Our low temps, even with snow and/or sleet, are only forecast to go to 29 on Tuesday but often we go colder than forecast.

I actually hope this cold spell sticks around a while and slows down all the plants that are getting too eager too early.

Telow, I am glad it works for you. It seems like we always have too much wind or rain at the same time the temps drop and I wouldn't be out there putting up heat lights. Tonight and tomorrow are supposed to be very windy here and Tuesday is supposed to be wet. I hope the trees blossoms aren't going to get too cold, but if they do, they do.

Of course, if we get the hail that's in the forecast for the overnight hours tonight or early tomorrow morning, the hail might knock the blossoms off the tree.

It seems like Oklahoma's weather has 101 ways to hurt the fruit crop some years, doesn't it? I guess that's why I am insanely happy when we do get fruit---because I remember all the years in which we don't. One year we didn't have extreme cold or hail, but had a dust storm come through with wind gusts in the 50s and 60s. No rain, no hail, but after the windstorm went through, most of the blooms and young fruit were on the ground. That's the first time I'd ever seen wind gust high enough to strip tiny plums off a tree. I don't know why it surprised me, though, because we had big power poles broken or tilting at crazy angles, power out, trees down, some people's roofs were torn off, and some folks' trampolines went airborne and traveled anywhere from maybe a hundred feet to hundreds of yards. Why would I think such winds wouldn't knock the small fruit off the trees?

We've had really good plum harvests lately and I'm getting spoiled. In the early 2000s it was the opposite. We'd have warm winters and they'd flower and fruit early, and then we'd have the Easter cold spell, sometimes accompanied by snow, and the fruit would freeze and fall from the tree while still small.

I have a friend who grows apricots here and gets a harvest about once every 6 or 7 years. Instead of worrying about the years he doesn't get apricots, he just enjoys the years when he gets them. I'm trying to emulate his good attitude, but I haven't planted an apricot tree here because I am afraid it would drive me crazy to lose the crop year after year.