It's supposed to go down to 22° tonight and my peach trees are full of blooms. Do I need to cover them? Or will they be able to hold up?

Unless your trees are small, covering them is going to be difficult and may cause more damage to the flowers then freezing will. Do you have trouble lights like mechanics use for seeing under cars? Hanging lights in the trees will help but they have to be lights that produce some heat.

In the past, I have used old fashioned Christmas tree lights, gas lanterns, kerosene lanterns, fire pits and propane patio heaters - anything that gives off heat. Even fans help because that will keep the air moving.

Make sure the trees are well watered, including the foliage. Ice is a good insulator. And, dehydration causes more damage than freezing.

They (the trees) should be fine if you water deeply. The blooms and any new foliage will probably die though. I have the same issue here with other early blooming trees too! I figured this was going to happen... sigh.... as soon as I saw overnite lows in the low 20s for 3 nights in a row. We were doing "fine" until the clouds moved away.

If they are small cover them. This happened to me a few times and I lost every flower and had no harvest those years.

Water them well and cover them if you can. if it is not going to be windy. You can take news paper and cover the branches. Staple the news paper closed and attach it tight to the branch at the part that is closest to the tree to hold it in place.

Best of luck to you. I have used Christmas lights before. But with those temps it would not help to save the flower or buds.

Thank you everyone for the replies. I could not water them because our hoses are put up for the winter and our outside spigots are drained. Plus, the trees are about 50 yards from the house, so I did the best I could with frost cover fabric. If I lose peaches, that's less for the squirrels to eat.

My Peach Ghosts!

I'm in Cartersville and totally spaced covering them last night. It was really windy though so we didn't have frost in our yard. I wonder if they will be OK. As for watering, I really don't think we need to water anything for 3 years.

Wind is good. If the air is moving, the cold can't settle on your plants.

This morning, they interviewed the owner of the peach orchard near me on the early news.

He said that he lost half his crop last year due to the late freeze.

He was hoping for the best this year.... But... Not really expecting to come through unscathed.

My peaches and plums have been full of blooms too... Petals have all dropped from the plums, they're probably a loss.

The peaches and pears?
Might not lose them all... My peaches don't do well here anyway... Too many pests and diseases... My pears, though... Those usually do nicely.

Don't the farmers do something to protect their trees? Smudge pots are a thing of the past, but the farmers on the west coast use crop fans and water sprayed into the trees. I can't imagine farmers on the east coast don't do something similar. We always knew when it was going to be extra cold because crop fans are loud.

While the orange growers in Florida put water on their trees all night, and the entire state is subsiding as a result... the well water is getting brackish as the water flows in from the ocean....
The peach grower was only showing his strawberries being covered. I don't know about the other peach growers in the area, but 2 years ago, they lost 90% of the crop.... Suggests not.

As far as I know in Georgia we do not do crop fans. I know they do water. The tree was fine yesterday when I went home and looked. It was 22 again last night but still no frost that I could see as we did have a good breeze again. Tonight I think might be the test. The winds are still and we have at least one more night below freezing. My tree is young, so I likely won't get fruit anyway. Honestly I don't even know if the pollinators have come out enough for it to even reach fruiting. It's such an early bloom this year. I had a November bloom last year. Weird Georgia weather.