Petal Fall & Starting Fertilization

It looks like we’ve had one of the best bloom seasons that we’ve witnessed in a while. Temperatures that were in a very good range spot for Bee Activity, pollination and fertilization. The bloom was neither too cold and drawn out nor too hot and too short. There was one thing that I noticed, that was odd. As you remember we had above average chilling coming into bloom, which should make varieties bloom all be very concise. However, it seemed like we didn’t have this.

First off independence was much later than the Nonpareil bloom. Normally with adequate chilling it blooms close to Nonpareil. Second varieties like Butte and Padre did not bloom together as good as I thought they would with the above average chilling that we had. I’m not sure what to think about this other than I think we have a lot to learn with Measuring chilling requirements depending on if it’s peaches, cherries, almonds and such.

I think that when we receive good chilling without much fog the chilling may not be as “good quality,” because when you measure spur wood surface temperatures during cold air temperatures (under 45 degrees) when the sun is out, one side of the tree or spur wood is very warm compared to outside air temperature. When you have fog and chilling temperatures under 45 degrees all the spur wood on the tree Is very close to the air temperature. When you look at weather averages in the last 10 to 15 years, we have had less chilling with foggy overcast than we’ve had in the past. I think that may be the difference, chilling with sunny weather versus chilling with foggy or overcast weather.

Most everybody should be starting and or completing their second Bloom/Petal fall spray. These fungicides we have available now worked well, even with some of the rain and disease infection periods that we have had, our team is out scouting has not noticed much disease. It looks like we have another wet weather pattern coming through starting Wednesday with showers off and on for 5 days or so.

With excellent pollination and fertilization whether that we’ve had, it looks like the tree will be trying to keep most of the flowers that were on the tree. This can set up the tree to be in a stress period when it is determining how much crop it can hold. It all depends on how much carbohydrate load is made and stored in the tree from last year. That Is the main determination on how many nuts it will hold on to. There is very little that we can do now except for little tweaks here and there.