Late Flowering Fruit Trees to Avoid Frost Damage
- Bill Wilson
Hello Fruit Tree Enthusiasts...
Why late flowering fruit tree cultivars?
We have a couple of clients with South facing slopes in Missouri. These slopes warm up much faster than North facing slopes and as such will tend to flower before the last frost thus killing the pollinated blossoms and eliminating the crop. So I emailed our Plant Guy, Bryce Ruddock, to make some recommendations.
His response was so helpful we thought many of you might appreciate what he shared with us as well. Here is the email from Bryce. Enjoy.
Bill,
These two links are to cultural and pollination data from U of Missouri.
http://extension.missouri.edu/p/G6021
http://extension.missouri.edu/p/G6001
And here is good list from Farming Gardens for apple pollination periods.
Edibles-Apple Trees – Farmington Gardens
If early blooming with resulting frost damage to the flowers is going to be a major issue then I would suggest going with the mid-season to late season bloomers. The nursery catalog from Raintree Nursery also has a very nice list of bloom times along with appropriate pollination partners. Lots of possibilities and you know me, I will always push heirloom cultivars before the new ones. Better flavor, reliable hardiness, better storage for the late varieties. Stay away from Honeycrisp as on dwarfing rootstocks it is highly prone to windthrow and breakage.
Apricots
Henderson and Iowa are good late blooming apricots.
Peaches
Check with Stark nursery catalog from Missouri for cold hardy cvs, such as Contender, Intrepid, and Reliance. Be sure to use Lovelle rootstock to avoid canker blight rot for all the peach, nectarine, and apricots.
Pears
Need to be resistant to fireblight so try ones such as Starking Delicious, Seckel, from Stark. From Raintree try Blake’s Pride, Warren, Harrow Delight, and Ayers.
Plums
Check with Raintree as they have many cvs.
Cherries
Try North Star, and Danube. Many other fruiting species are in that catalog and also at One Green World.
http://www.raintreenursery.com/
https://onegreenworld.com/
Hope this helps Bill.
Happy designing… Bryce
9 thoughts on “Late Flowering Fruit Trees to Avoid Frost Damage”
Growing stone fruits and I’m oin zone 5zB
. curious how much effect the Rootstocks have on blooming time. Late bloomers make a high difference here. All.my best producers are late bloomers. I also noticed at what ground temperature the sap starts to flow.mI do a lot to prevent the ground ground from warming up to Early. Anything you can do to prevent early blooming is the only hope you have to produce fruit
With a quick bit of research, it sounds like a rootstock can influence the blooming time but it’s not the primary factor.
Would the recommended varieties be appropriate to grow in Denver? Thanks!
As long as you make sure the rootstock is appropriate for where you’re planting the varieties should be fine.
I live in Denver (Centennial) and the Reliance peach is great.
Reliance and Intrepid work well for me near Denver. They mostly got zapped this year but a great crop last year.
Thanks for sharing this Andrew. Helpful to know.
He writes “Check with Raintree “. But there is no link. What is “raintree”?
It is linked at the end of the article… Raintree is a plant nursery.
Cheers…