Houston’s infrequent hard freezes can often come when our fruit trees are in bud or bloom. The stage of bloom, meaning how developed the buds or how open the blooms are, can make a big difference on whether the frost or freeze will damage the blooms, resulting in fruit loss.

This chart will give you a visual reference to determine whether you need to worry about your spring bloom and fruit set after we have had a frost or freeze. More often than not, we won’t see much damage on our temperate fruit trees.

Citrus is a different story, and this does not apply to citrus, semi-tropicals or tropicals.