As we quickly approach spring, and the early budding of our trees, you might become a little frustrated if your fruit trees do not make this year.  There is a high probability of this occurrence, and it is due to our warm winter.

Peach trees, as well as many other fruit trees, need a certain number of chill hours to produce fruit.  Winter chilling is needed for fruit trees to break dormancy, bloom and grow normally in the spring.  Numerous ways of calculating chilling have been devised; one method is to measure the number of hours of winter chilling a specific location receives at or below 45° F.  Rainy or cloudy days are more efficient at overcoming dormancy than clear days, and sub-freezing temperatures have little effect breaking down plant growth inhibitors.  Chilling and dormancy is a complicated phenomenon, but the old standard measure of air temperature at locations is as accurate as any.  If varieties of fruit trees are chosen that have a chilling requirement that is too low, there is a greater probability that they will bloom early and be more subject to frost.  If the chilling requirement is too high, they may be very slow to break dormancy and abort fruit.  Homeowners should plant varieties which have the correct chilling requirement for our area, which is 800 chill hours for Bosque County.  I looked up the number of chill hours reported for Meridian thru February 22, 2017 and we had only had 510 hours at this time.

For more information on fruit trees and varieties of fruit trees for Bosque County contact the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Office at 254-435-2331