Easiest winter overall in MT

[ElkHunter]

I spoke tooo soon. haha Frost got mine this morning. 2nd time it hit 26 did it. I picked all of mine and I'm going to pickle them and can them.

[Reziac]

We always just covered our garden at night with bedsheets, and if we ran out of sheets, newspaper, if windy also weighted with garden hoses, rocks, shovels, or whatever. We usually managed to keep the tomatos producing until the ground froze and killed the roots. Same with beans (ugh) and squash. Sometimes they'd last til the week of Halloween.

[ElkHunter]

Originally Posted by Reziac

We always just covered our garden at night with bedsheets, and if we ran out of sheets, newspaper, if windy also weighted with garden hoses, rocks, shovels, or whatever. We usually managed to keep the tomatos producing until the ground froze and killed the roots. Same with beans (ugh) and squash. Sometimes they'd last til the week of Halloween.

Squash reminds me a lot of a cockroach. Not much kills either one.

I have a question that maybe somebody on here can answer. A guy here in town has a small apple tree with huge apples on it. Everybody else in town had NO apples this year, due to a late frost, but this guys tree is heavy with apples.

Because of the cold weather, he has draped net over his tree. Why? What does it do? Is it for blackbirds or is it due to the frost. The guy and is wife are on travel for the next couple weeks, but they covered their tree before they left, so I can't ask them. Thought maybe somebody else has seen this practice.

[Reziac]

Originally Posted by ElkHunter

Squash reminds me a lot of a cockroach. Not much kills either one.

Rabbits. Trust me, rabbits.

Originally Posted by ElkHunter

I have a question that maybe somebody on here can answer. A guy here in town has a small apple tree with huge apples on it. Everybody else in town had NO apples this year, due to a late frost, but this guys tree is heavy with apples.

Dang, scarf me some seeds, or better yet cuttings, from that tree!

Originally Posted by ElkHunter

Because of the cold weather, he has draped net over his tree. Why? What does it do? Is it for blackbirds or is it due to the frost. The guy and is wife are on travel for the next couple weeks, but they covered their tree before they left, so I can't ask them. Thought maybe somebody else has seen this practice.

I'm thinkin' that practice is for the birds.

[ElkHunter]

Oh yeah, I'm going to see if I can get a branch or two. I'll even buy a grow lamp so I can nurse it this winter to give it a good start. When they get back, I'm darn sure going to talk to him. Face it, this town probably has 400 apple trees and he is the ONLY one that has apples and they are huge. Even the neighbors crab apple tree produced NOTHING. This guy has something going and I'm going to find out what.

Another neighbor let her asperagas go to seed. We have a full coffee cup of seeds that are going into the ground. We also put in about 20 plants of horseradish and they grew great this summer, so they are well rooted and will bring lots of tears to our eyes next summer.

[waymire01]

Of course ripe tomatoes are best, but there are tons of things you can do with the green ones, including pickles, jam, chutney, etc.. and good old fried are fantastic. Here are some ideas: 25 Green Tomato Recipes To Try : TipNut.com

Another link for ripening ideas: How to Ripen Green Tomatoes: 19 steps (with pictures) - wikiHow but you have to get to them before the frost.

Did a bit of research on the Apples.. There are a lot of trick and tips out there. Apparently the netting not only keeps the critters out, it protects from wind/hail/heavy rain as well. They cross pollinate so you have to have at least two varieties growing close to one another.. or hand pollinate with branches of another tree. Also found a lot of tips on protecting the blossoms from late frosts, including running a sprinkler during the entire frost, keeping the blossoms consistently wet will stop them from freezing. How you prune makes a big difference as well. Location is really important too, he may have just found the "sweet spot" in his yard. From what I read, I'm betting this guy babies the heck out of his tree..

I have some online friends in the middle states and NE who were saying they had the same problem with their fruit trees this year.. the general consensus was weird weather.. too warm then too cold etc... so it is not just in WY. Even here in Louisiana it has been a weird year, our bees were practically non-existent and most of our other insects as well were much fewer than normal.. wasps, dragonflies, butterflies, grasshoppers, ladybugs... pretty much across the board. Our grass did well, but the clover, which is usually everywhere, has been very scarce. Even the weeds.. which are are a force to be reckoned with here, are much smaller/weaker than in previous years. Very few wildflowers. We do not garden, but I have noticed the lack of street vendors.. normally this time of year they are everywhere selling veggies and fruits from the back of their trucks.. so I am assuming it's been a bad year for produce here as well.

[jasper12]

Apple tree...we had a peach tree orchard, in Utah. The peaches on the south and west were always bigger and better. Those were the "store" peaches. The north and east trees were for pie or canning. Especially the peaches right by the cinder block wall, they were the best. I think the cinder blocks blocked the wind and also were warmed by the sun all day, and kept the peach trees warmer. And water. We had well water and irrigated those trees in the spring, summer and fall. Miss those peaches. Store bought is not the same.

[Reziac]

One of the tricks the orange growers found is that for winter hardiness, own-root (grown from seed or straight from cuttings) beats hell out of grafted, even if the rootstock is supposed to be hardy. They overwinter better and the fruit is less frost-affected. I'm thinkin' it's likely the same with other freeze-sensitive fruit trees.

Hey, anyone got any beer apples? That's a pinkish-red crabapple that makes a distinctly barrel-shaped fruit (NOT round) about an inch long or sometimes a little better. It's some variant of the malus dolgo that's normally only used as a rootstock, so you probably only see it when the grafted part dies off and the dolgo takes over. Anyway, it makes the best apple jelly ever.

[historyfan]

The big apples might be Wolf River or variant of. They are a later maturing apple so bud later and are less prone to Spring frosts. They are not overly flavorful but are excellent for applesauce if some other more flavorful apples are added. They can be bigger than softballs. Not good keepers.
Or maybe just Macintosh which are also little later - not as big as Wolfs. They need microclimate to grow well in Montana as do most 4-5 zone apples.
Nets will keep blackbirds from eating the majority of ripe crop. They will peck a hole in each apple that becomes red. Depending on size of netting, some can deter a moth that lays eggs and produces a "wormy" apple.

[oldtrader]

The best thing is to find a good horticulturist and find what apples will grow well, have a late blossom tendency to beat late frosts, and have a shorter growing season to beat the early frosts. And then many years, it is just luck to have a crop in Montana.

Our three trees forgot to have a crop this year, so you are not alone. And people in the area that had a bumper crop last year, don't have any at all this year.

Apple trees need to be grafted trees, not saplings. It gives them a healthier and stronger root system.