Pink Lady, We propagate all of them you mention and then some, but I think I like the Pink Lady best, its a late season harvest though (Oct)

Here is a link that might be useful: Apples in Arizona (very low chill)

Anna is hard to beat for productivity and an early-season apple; you'll need Dorsett Golden (also very decent) as a pollinator. Pink Lady is good paired with Granny Smith, another late-season bloomer.

But don't let the chilling hours stop you; I grow 100 varieties on 200 hrs. of chill here in zone 9/10a.

Applenut

I had an Anna that was very productive (5th year) but I pulled it out this weekend since we don't eat them. The taste is OK but not great. What good are a lot of apples if you don't enjoy eating them?

My wife and I love Granny Smith and Pink Lady. I planted a Granny Smith but had an unfortunate accident with a weedeater that killed it. It had some apples on it at the time so I know they will grow here. I will have another one as soon as they are available for sure.

I also recently planted a Pink Lady and it is looking good so far.

Both are excelent to add to salads to give them a little oomph.

It's been 35 years since I've tended any trees in a similar climate but if Pink Lady can be grown where you are I'd consider it, especially with a Granny Smith graft or both planted in the same hole if you also want a culinary apple. A good keeping apple is worth much more than one that goes soft in a month if you are serious about using these apples. Granny Smith grown there will be far superior to anything from Washington State.

The question is what kind of apple do you love? To me Pink Lady is a good an eating apple as you can find- some gravitate to the low acid sugar of Fuji, which also grows well in warm climates.

Hi all, sorry I forgot to mention that I am mostly interested in apples for fresh eating but also baking and applesauce.

Since I have only one spot for an apple, I will either need a multigrafted apple or a self-fruitful one.

I do love Granny Smiths and my kids happily eat them fresh, but, don't they need at least 400 hours of chill? In my town we often only get just over 300, so 400 might be pushing it most winters.

I will look for pink lady in the stores to try out before I decide. That seems to be the overwhelming favorite so far on this forum! Meanwhile, has anybody tried Beverly Hills, and what is it best for?

I tended a couple Beverly Hills apple trees in S. CA almost 40 years ago. It was the original low chill apple. My recollection was that it was pretty soft and not great but I'm sure someone else can give you a more recent evaluation.

You can graft Granny on a Pink Lady. I like to graft a second variety to the trunk making it the upper half of a central leader tree, if that makes any sense to you. However Granny would be better on the bottom of such a tree because it is more vigorous than Pink Lady from my observation. This probably just confuses you but I figure there's a chance the suggestion might be useful.

William's Pride is a good low chill apple as well, its a early variety.

Pettingal is a pretty good one also. I would suggest grafting a pink lady to a granny smith. I have an Anna and for an early season apple it is good. Fuji is also excellent. I just picked a few of my galas they were good also.

Girlbug2;

Ignore the chilling hours, and just plant what you want.

Applenut

I believe Applenut is involved in a project to help Africans grow apples in the tropics (seriously), so you might want to consider his opinion. Apparently the chill hours issue is somewhat bogus. You do get the chance to try varieties that most of us will never taste at proper ripeness, like Granny Smith, which is allegedly a wonderful apple when grown with a long season not available in the northwest.

Thanks everybody for all the advice. This has definitely been helpful to me and made me reconsider. Why not try a Granny Smith grafted onto a Pink Lady, since those are the two that get the highest praise. You all will be hearing questions from me later on how to accomplish that.

Harvestman, I am surprised that chill hours are in question.(apples only? or does that apply to stonefruits, because I wish I could grow cherries here).

I imagine all you apple growers are enjoying some harvests right about now. Paint me green with envy!

I think you can pretty much forget cherries. Certainly no one grew them in S. CA when I live there. But with the possibility of growing nectarines, plums, apricots and pluots, who needs cherries?

Actually, we got wonderful cherries off our Royal Lee and Minnie Royal cherry trees this year; they are of exscellent quality and are productive in low-chill environments. We've also been harvesting apples since late June, and yes, export export apples to the tropics (where they are widely grown).

Apples are the most reliable fruit we grow in our low-chill area, but there are many excellent stonefruit varieties that perform well also; but you must be more choosy about the chilling hours, as the wrong vareity will be a shade tree instead of a fruit tree.

Ah, things can change in 35 years. I've never even heard of Royal Lee or Minnie Royal, but I bet they're from the same breeding program.

I'd go dorsett hands down every time. Properly thinned they are 3" apples good
for all uses. canned, fresh, applesauce, apple pies and don't need a lot of sugar
as do the anna. And they are a sure self pollinator. I have pettingill, a lot like
granny but even at listed 100 hr chill there and Very husky I have to wait for it
to break dormancy and blossom at the very tail end of dorsett so have to save
pollen to get any apples. I am using it for breeding.
the flavor of dorsett here is like a yellow delicious with more flavors mixed in.
just delightful.

Just bought a 5-in-1 bareroot apple at OSH.

Golden Dorsett, Anna, Fuji, Beverly Hills & Ein Shemer - all supposed good low-chill varieties, so I went for it.

Cannot wait!!!

CAN YOU ACTUALLY GROW PINK LADY APPLES IN FLORIDA 9B ON 200 CHILL HOURS OR LESS?

I have never seen any varieties recommended or for sale other than the usual Golden Dorsetts, Anna's etc.

Nighthawk: Much of the old traditional theory about what varieties will or will not grow in low chill environments has been shown false in the last couple of decades. In Phoenix we're seeing success with about 4 times the number of varieties that people thought would work fifteen years ago.

Yukkuri - sounds like a great mix on that tree. I've never had an Ein Shemer but I have heard they're pretty bad tasting but make an excellent pollinizer for your other varieites.

Hi everyone! 5 years later and soooooo much more experienced...well somewhat. My update:

Have planted a 3-in-1 apple grouping; Dorsett Golden (mostly because it's a good pollinizer), Gold Rush, and William's Pride. In five seasons, these trees have grown very well and the Dorsett Golden has been most productive -- but also boring. Gold Rush on the other hand, is a most spectacular apple! It is so hard to wait until October to harvest it, but well worth the wait. It is dense and crispy with a unique flavor, the finest I have ever tasted. I suppose if I went to Whole Foods, I'd never find a Gold Rush apple for sale among their heirlooms; GR is small, tends to have that brownish scabbing on the shoulders, doesn't look impressive at all. They only sell perfect-looking produce at WF and other organic, premium type supermarkets. Their loss...but that's why we grow our own fruits, so we can experience what retailers don't know for sensational taste.

The William's Pride produces great, early apples; in fact, I get 2 or 3 smallish harvests per year now. WP is like a much-improved Red Delicious, with that similar sweet, perfumey scent and deep purple/red color. Like the GR apple, however, WP is crisp, never mealy. Too bad it's not a very productive tree overall, but still it's worth the garden space.

"They" said I needed low chill apple varieties in Orange County.. "they" were dead wrong. If I could have proven "them" wrong with more varieties in my small, humble yard, you bet I would have by now! But since I have had such unprecedented success with my two "HIGH CHILL" apple trees, I would encourage anyone in my zone (or even warmer) to try ANY apple variety you think you'd like... I have a strong gut feeling you will be eating some pretty amazing apples in a season or two.

Oh, and as a West Coast gardener, you will enjoy the fact that those apple moth pests are absent. At least, I haven't yet seen any of the typical apple tree pests and diseases I'd been warned about. So far, I have not had to spray anything on my apple trees. I'm a lazy organic gardener, so all I do is spread compost and a little fertilizer at the base every spring. This county must be heaven on earth for apple growing.

So thanks for all the advice, garden forum people.

Jason, give it time. My trees took a full year to grow and settle in before I saw some flowering and fruiting, and even then, it was minimal for that second season. By the third spring however they just exploded in productivity. I think (and have read a bit to confirm) that the myth of apples needing "chill" hours is actually based on the fact that they are somewhat slower to start in warmer climates than climates where they get that dormancy period induced by low temperatures -- it probably jump starts them when the temperature climbs up in the spring, so to speak. But your tree should eventually adapt to zone 10.

My Williams Pride is the last of the three to leaf out and start flowering...usually in May. But it's also the earliest harvest.

Ok great! Thanks for the words of encouragement, I'm really hoping that it ends up being productive. I'll have to remove any lingering leaves when Fall rolls around, I didn't this year and it may have been what caused it to be so slow this year.

Nice update! Love seeing an old thread bumped with results. Here in Nor Cal I have Fuji, Granny Smith, Yellow Newton Pippin. They all fruit every year 300-500 hrs chill.