I think, fingers crossed, that we've seen the back of the cold weather. A run of five consecutive nights of below freezing temperatures in April is the longest we've had in my ten years of weather records. It started me looking back at the previous spell of cold weather in April which occurred back in 2013.
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| April Minimum Temperature 2010 - 2019 |
The minimum April temperatures are shown in the table above and are colour coordinated from warmest in darkest red through to coldest in darker blue. The last spell of cold April weather was in 2013 only that came earlier in the month. I checked back through our harvesting records and found that 2013 wasn't a bad year for our plums. I'm concerned that this year's plum crop will be affected by the frosty nights whilst the trees have been in flower.
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| Details of Plum Harvest in 2013 |
A total of almost 41kg was a good crop so I initially thought that a cold start to April did little to reduce the plum crop. My hopes were raised a little bit that the cold nights wouldn't have damaged the plum blossom and we were still in with a chance of a good harvest. I wondered if I'd made any blog post comments at the time regarding the blossom and the effects of any frost. First of all I found this post from early April 2013.
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| Archive Blog Post Early April 2013 |
The difference in 2013 was that we hadn't had any mild weather through February and March. and everything was still in winter mode rather than being drawn into spring mode during winter only to be returned to winter once spring arrived which is what has happened this year. I carried on looking through a few more posts from April 2013. I found this post.
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| Archive Blog Post Late April 2013 |
In April 2013 when we had a cold and frosty start to April the plum and greengage blossom wasn’t damaged by the frost because it wasn't out and didn't come out for another couple of weeks after the frosts. I've decided we are just going to have to wait and see if the frost this year has caused any damage to the cherry, pear, greengage and plum blossom. Our apples are just coming into flower at the allotment so hopefully they won't have been damaged by the frosts.
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