It seems that frosts for the Willamette valley are done for this Spring. I have considerable bloom loss on my pluots and asian plums. Frosted into blackness. Some blooms survived for having budded and opened a few days later. Worst hit was my Satsuma plum. So many burnt blossoms I thought the tree had up and died. But there are leaves popping out all over now, although I think some pruning back will be necessary. I've never had frost damage like this before.
I don't think the sweet cherries or peaches were hurt, but the cold and rain may make a poor apple set, but only time will tell.
Oddly enough, my Flavor Grenade pluot looks to have set a bumper crop.
What toll did the April weather take on your trees?
javascript:emoticon(':x')I don't see much obvious cold damage on my fruits. A new pawpaw and contorted mulberry show some signs of damage but I don't think its from April.
My cherry bloomed for the 2nd time this year. The weather doesn't seem very conducive to pollination or fruit set, but once again I noticed that many if not most of the flowers seem to be missing important female parts.
Occasionally, being a week or so behind most at bloom-time can be a good thing! I was interested in the conversation around here describing the ‘bloom overlap’ that’s occurring; where the cold weather has delayed or prolonged bloom time to the point several different cultivars were open at the same time. I’m hoping for some amazing pollination … and hoping 
I’ve not looked for early plum formation, though my Satsuma obviously bloomed first, as usual. I’ve too often witnessed what I think has been described as a ‘false pollination;’ where fruit begins to form, then withers and drops at a very early age due to inadequate pollination.
Actually, things look pretty good, if wet. My first check after those two days of hard frost were the leaves of my Fuzzy and Hardy Kiwis. The ‘first to go,’ they were green and growing! That ‘cool air drainage’ I often complain about likely helps keep things stirred up just enough on those extra cold nights to save me, as I rarely get ‘burned’ by late frosts.
With cherries in full bloom (if late), and my old Gravenstein just beginning to open – a good two weeks late(!) – I’ll have to be patient 
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My Honeycrisp and other apples were at over 50% bloom yesterday. Last year they were in full bloom before the end of March, but last year was unusually early. This year is unusually late. These were my first couple of years so I'm having a heck of a time figuring out what is "usual".
Here is something else interesting that might be an indication of the change in the slow weather pattern lately. It was in observing a late pear spur that opened up with extra flower ruffles but instead of the normal location it was attached to the end of two pairs of anthers in two different places of the same flower;
[url:3sr3pxbq]http://home.comcast.net/~hollaus/Greens/Anomalities/PearSpur.htm[/url:3sr3pxbq]
I have never seen this before, and I do lots of hand pollinating of various types of fruits. The closest thing I have to match it is from a Russian scientist "Michurin" who discovered an unusual looking pear with appendages growing from the end. He called it the vegetative pear.
[url:3sr3pxbq]http://www.bulbnrose.org/Heredity/Michurin/veg_pear.htm[/url:3sr3pxbq]
Mine is partly self fertile, so I'm going to try and self the parts together and see if something interesting comes of it.
[quote="Rooney":2ls4npxj]
Mine is partly self fertile, so I'm going to try and self the parts together and see if something interesting comes of it.[/quote:2ls4npxj]
I wonder if some killed mentor pollen would up your selfing success rate?
A weeks worth of co2 might just killed pollen. So would UV light. Or an alcohol washing.
I know that this is getting farthur and farther off topic of spring weather and I guess that is okay -but I never forget what a post college student told me 15 years ago, that the older a tree, and the more the optimal conditions for pollination, then the more inclination of the blossoms to self set. Of course this applies to fruits that are nomally self incompatible. I agree that mentor pollen works in wide normally difficult to do crossings as it has for a century when Luther Burbank started doing it. I tend to agree with you this would be applicable for fruits that under normal circumstances won't self.
I think I put this optimal enhancement of using older trees idea to work recently with good results while years ago purchasing a 'Van' cherry which happens to be naturally early to produce large crops. It came grafted on a productive rootstock Gisela-5 making it even better. This spring it gave me a good start when using it as pistillate parent with prunus pennsylvanica (pin cherry) pollen. After 3 weeks of pollination 75% of blossoms tried are sizing up very well and the others are drying up. In locations on the tree where I used mentor pollen it didn't improve anything.
This is still a work in progress where I still don't know if I'm really going to get all of the 185 cherries that are on there now, but I think I'm beginning to find out.
I don't know if it's weather-related or not, but my sweet cherry trees all have varying degrees of failed buds. That is, leaf buds that swell and green up, but never open and just die and dry up. Some branches are completely ruined by this.
I don't remember this happening before. Would a long, cold Spring account for this?
I didn't notice a lot of failed buds on my cherries, but my arctic kiwi female got smoked and it looks like it will have about 1/10th of the flower buds it normally does. Hardy kiwi doesn't look as damaged. Maybe it is used to more wet weather diseases. Lots of black buds on the arctic, a few on the hardy.
JohN S
PDX OR
I don't know if it's weather-related or not
I think this is related to weather and that your culprit is bacterial (pseudomonas syringae) related. This is a disease that is much a problem west of the Cascades, for further reading you can go to the last full paragraph of page 4 of 7 in this link to see how this is for us.
[url:bspet2ba]http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1388900&blobtype=pdf[/url:bspet2ba]
Peaches and apricots are even more prone than sweet cherries. You didn't say what kind of cherry. There are sweet cherries with higher resistance, for example I have 'Early Burlat' that does great and at the same time (15 years ago) bought a 'Stella' which died of the disease before it even fruited.
Chemicals can work or a rain tarp. You can either go with the recommended cherries for our area like I did with the Burlat or even graft one on next year. I have heard that you can do something to improve resistance if you have a leaf deficiency of zinc by enriching that element back into the soil, do a leaf analysis first.
Sustained high temperatures of 80F for a few afternoons in a row will put that bacteria to rest as well. At least until cool and rain time again.
Idyllwild
simplepress
jafar
Marsha H
Viron
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