Tags
apples, autumn, chill hours for apples, desert gardening, dormancy, fall, low water use, new mexico, spring weather, winter
That’s some of the last of the apple leaves. Aren’t they lovely? And check out these blue skies:
Nice eh? Even over on this side of the sky:
It has been unseasonably warm this fall (actually, it’s been gorgeous- if distressingly warm temperatures persisting far longer than they should appeals to you), which means I need to water the apples. Usually I don’t have to do this- I do it once a winter, in mid-January, unless I forget, in which case they don’t get watered until they are about to bud, and they seem to be fine.
Here’s the thing…the apple trees are sleeping.
Shhhh…
And I don’t want to wake them up, so I am careful when I water. This is really a spring issue, when early watering can bring trees out of dormancy just in time for a big freeze to, as they say, ‘nip them in the bud’. I think this is far less likely to happen here in late fall, when they’ve just fallen asleep, but still, it’s something I think about- like getting your sleeping kid from the car seat to their crib without waking them, so they still get their whole nap in.
So I am watering today, because the forecast is for really low temperatures tonight and for the coming few days. The water can get in there and get things wet around the roots without the tree getting any ideas.
I want to make sure my apples get their proper ‘chill hours’, particularly with the warm fall we’ve had. Based on what I’m reading, dormancy is more than just a tree ‘stopping’- it’s an action the tree takes, and so needs to be ‘broken’. The tree actively goes dormant so that warm periods in the fall (like now) don’t wake it up…but then if it doesn’t chill enough the dormancy doesn’t get get broken sufficiently and the tree will fail to flower well.
So stay asleep, trees, and hope for the cold, and don’t let me disturb you. See you in the spring.