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Joran Viers: How to keep fruit warm through another freeze?

The Garden Guy

By Joran Viers
Tuesday, April 3, 2007

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We all have our obsessions. One of my big ones lately is fruit. Not so much the eating of it — though I surely do enjoy fresh, juicy morsels — but more the growing of it. OK, it really boils down to looking through catalogs, consulting my more-expert colleagues about good varietals, ordering and then planting the trees and vines and canes, etc. Recently, I was admonished by my lovely better-half, "Enough with the fruit trees already!"

My little orchard is just coming into its own. About six years ago, I did the bulk of the planting — various apricots, apples, plums, pears, nectarines and cherries. I've more recently added peaches, more apples and more cherries. The apricots have finished blooming, the peaches and nectarines are in full sway, the cherries and apples are up on deck and ready to unfurl their sweet-scented, five-petaled rose flowers for the 14 hives of bees living on the back of the property (thanks to Les Crowder, beeman extraordinaire). Did you know all these trees are in the rose family?

With some likelihood of a frost still to come, I'm worried. A light frost won't hurt, but below about 28 degrees, the blossoms and nascent fruit will be lost. One of my apricots is the variety Harglow, a late bloomer for an apricot, and the other is a Manchurian apricot, which is about five days behind the Harglow, but both are now vulnerable.

So, on frost-potential nights, I'll set up a sprinkler in the orchard and run it during the coldest part of the night. As the water comes out of the hose at about 65 degrees, it gives off heat as it cools down to the freezing point. As it freezes, it gives off even more heat during its change from liquid to solid. This little bit of heat rising up through the canopies may be enough to keep the air right around above the critical 28-degree threshold.

I'll turn the water off when the air gets back up to 32 degrees. If the trees were smaller, I'd probably cover them with blankets and put a light bulb under there, but at 15 feet tall, I can't.

The apples will be fine, as they leaf out before they bloom, and the blossoms are still tightly in their buds. What may well get them is the dread codling moth. I've got a plan for those nasty little buggers: First, by setting out sticky traps baited with the female sex pheromone, I'll be able to tell when they start flying.

Then, by using weather data accessible through the New Mexico Apple Growers Web site (www.nmapples.com), I'll be able to track degree-days and know when to spray. The pesticide of choice is a fungal byproduct called spinosad, which is heck on caterpillars — the larva of codling moths — and doesn't hurt beneficial insects. It's even OK for use in organic orchards, depending on which brand you use.

With careful timing, I should be able to apply four to six sprays and get about 95 percent worm-free apples.

In my official capacity as an extension horticulture agent, I'm starting to develop some data that I hope to be able to make easily available, so people in different parts of town will have a good idea when to spray. I've got cooperators in different parts of Bernalillo County who will be trapping the moths and reporting when they fly, and my hope is to be able to provide information in time for next year's crop. Hey, this stuff takes time, so stay tuned.

Viers is horticulture agent for the Bernalillo County Cooperative Extension Service. Call him at 243-1386 or e-mail Joran Viers.