frozen fruit trees

I watched a farmer on the boob tube 'show' us how to tell if our fruit trees got nipped in this last late cold snap. all he did was pull the center out of the blossom and say 'see...its dead'... so how do I tell if its 'dead' ? this will probably be a bad year for me to make any objective determinations on the production of my fruit trees

i have to replace nearly all the fruit trees i planted last year..they froze..evidently on the way home from the store..even though they were wrapped and tarped..and we drove slow..

Hmm...I'm not sure about this, but I don't think you can tell if the whole tree is dead by looking at the blossoms. That seems to me like a way to see if the flowers got pulped, thus indicating not that the tree is dead, but that there won't be a crop this year. The way I check to see if a tree is dead is use a knife or your fingernail to scratch away a bit of bark on one of the twigs to see if it has a vibrant green cambium. If the answer is no, test a bigger stick closer to the trunk. Keep checking back until you find green. If you get all the way to the ground and it's brown, sickly olive drab, or pulpy & stinky, it's likely dead. Bear in mind, however, that some trees will resprout from root suckers or stump sprouts, so don't write it off too quickly if it's a seedling.

The surest way to tell if it is dead is to wait and see if it leafs out.

Dave

I'm with Dave.  Wait and see.  I think the guy meant the crop, too, not the trees themselves.

Sue

sorry. he was talkinga about the blossoms not the tree. the trees have already leafed out and bloomed adn then we had lows in the 20's which is unusual at this time of year. still the insides of th blossoms don't look any different to me the guy said he was expecting anywhere from a 10-90% drop in production this year from his apple orchard because of the freeze.  there is surely alot of micro climates. maybe that means mine was protected enough that it didn't kill the buds.

ronbre.- sorry about your trees it really sucks to have all that time an investment into them and then they croak. its probably alot harder up in the frozen north. not too long ago they were showing pics of the winter blizzard conditions somewhere up north and I felt bad cause I had almost bought tomato plants that day. which I did yesterday. 4 beef masters and 4 better boys. partly just to patronize the local feed store and make sure they keep seedlings in  I am will try to round up some black weed barrier to help warm the soil around them but they can already go in the ground. I want to get them in asap so they are well on there way to producing before august heat shut down their production.