Thursday, March 12, 2015

The good, the potential and the ugly

 We had a nice quick trip to southern California
 to visit the grand kids, which were delightful.  While
driving we made a lot of observations:

Southern Cal was 85 during the day but got cool down to 45 at night. 
There are a lot of peach, almond, an pistachio trees starting to bloom, in bloom
 or to soon be in bloom.  (In many cases, what we are seeing in Oregon
 is very  close to California conditions across the state)

Many orchards had partial blooms going on, where some trees were
blooming nicely, and others had low bloom?  Different varieties maybe.

Bees were being put out in the orchards, but pretty sparsely.  Issue - if
California is down on bee hives;  plus the orchards are JUST coming
into bloom;  as are the Oregon orchards, there may be a shortage of bee
hives.  If you get bee hives, I would check to see if they are available yet.

This may be of concern for the state's blueberry crop.

Point - a lot of crops in Oregon and California, as of 3-12-2015 are
 coming on and blooming at the same time.  Usually we see a
difference in time.

Valley peach, plum, prune are pre to bloom.  So far, this past week
the cool weather  may have slowed down the bloom just a bit.  The
pears are starting  to show flower clusters, no white year, and apples
 are still amazingly tight bud still.  Get the pruning down ASAP
as well as any apple grafting.

 

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