7 pm EST. I will be driving a red Toyota 4Runner. See you then.

I wish you both good luck with your apples!

In my experience I only had 1 Anna and produced a lot of apples. In this house I planted Spitzenburg and Pink Lady and they produced without me going to any extra trouble, in fact because they were planted in the front yard, I don't go there often. They produced for me, one is an old heirloom variety. After a few years of getting small apples and fungus, they are out and I planted something else.:)

Silvia

Silvia,i might be wrong but i thought spitzenburg needed something like 7 or 800 hours of chill

Very nice apples Silvia. I do have one pink lady apple tree also. It has only been in the ground for one season so no flowers yet but it grows very well. I have high expectations for it along with my Fuji. Pink Lady and Fuji are two my favorite apples.

Jaun, Brevard rare fruit council. Next meeting Wednesday February 22. Address is 2205 front street Melbourne Florida 32901. Hope to see you there. It was very nice to meet you. Its from 7:30 to 9:30pm

Thanks Glenn. I was happy to meet you as well. I will definitely be there for the next meeting.

Silvia,did you take your apples out?

Thank you Juan, in Arizona we had access to a very nice apples at the farmers market, they were grown south that is cooler. At my old house in Phoenix I had a too productive 1 single Anna tree and made a lot of apple sauce. For fresh eating I bought the Pink Lady. While living in the Northeast my favorites were the Macoun and Honeycrisp, nothing beats picking apples at the orchards farms there....they were actually all amazing and kept well in the cold basements.:)

Glen, when I bought the Spitzenburg, it said low chill and it was Thomas Jefferson favorite variety, where I bought it is not selling any more but according to Bay Laurel nursery it said 500 or less. Of course I did take the apples out and sampled them, they were fine but smaller compared to what they are supposed to be and that would of been fine but I was constantly fighting some kind of blight or fungus and since I am organic gardener I cannot be spraying anything that is not.

I like your enthusiasm and hope your apples are fruitful!

Silvia

Thanks Silvia

This Thread is so innformative. Thank you all for sharing your experiences.

I live in Clearwater, i think in Zone 9 but aomw say this is zone 10. Any input?

At our home we have 2 apple trees (Fuji and Anna) they are on 3rd year 9 ft tall. We are hoping for fruit this year.

Also 2 persimmon, 1 prune,1 pear, 2 pomegranate (2 fruits last year but went bad) lots of grapes, 1 avocado 2 figs, bunch of lemons and oranges. 1 peach ( 2 died) 1 quincy. 2 olives very healthy. 2 mangos healthy as well.

Everything is on 2nd or third year. Grapes arendoing fine, but we've had issues with leaf insects and various diseases.

Do you have any recommendations regarding the diseases and fealf insects?

Build america i think Clearwater is zone 9b. Juan let me know when your going to trim your fruit trees please

Glenn,

I am done with my pruning for this season but I will post a message here when I have some extra clippings.

Juan

Thanks. Juan

I saw something today in my home orchard that I had been waiting on for almost 3 years....check these out...

These are the first blooms I have ever seen from my moorpark apricot trees. I have two of these trees and they both are showing signs of blooming. Earlier this year and last year around the same time I got blooms from my Royal Blenheim apricot tree. But this is the first time the moorpark's have showed evidence of blooming. Maybe they are not moorparks but that is how they were labeled when I purchased them. This is in zone 9b with about 100 chill hours this winter.

Very nice Juan, I learned of a apricot that is very low chill at the brevard fruit tree council meet last Wednesday its called katy apricot has a 200 chill hour. Ate some they are very good. How is that lapins cherry doing?

Hi Glenn,

No fruit from the lapins cherry yet but the tree is still kind of small so I am not too surprised. I was there at the meeting on Wednesday. I tasted the fruit from the table and I don't recall seeing any Katy Apricots there. I also saw that Katy Apricot tree that was being raffled. I went searching online and found another variety called GoldKist Apricot that is a reliable bearer in zone 9b. I purchased one of those and a braeburn apple tree from Bay Laurel Nursery in California. I plan to join the Brevard Rare Fruit Council later at next months meeting. Right now my Tangelo and the navel orange/dancy tangering combo tree I purchased from rockledge nursery last year are blooming. The tangerine branch has yet to open flowers but the navel orange has. The two are chock full of blooms but only a handful have opened so far. I am hoping the honey bees swarming my key lime will take some time to check out these other two citrus and pollinate them for me. The tangelo is self-infertile so it need some other citrus around for pollination. Even so I am not taking any chances and started to manually pollinate those blooms that have already opened today. Regarding my apples it looks like I was partially successful in pollinating the Anna, Tropic Sweet and Dorsett Golden apple trees. Most of the blooms have dried up but there are about a dozen that are starting to swell up at the base. It looks like they are little apples in the making :-). I inspected the royal blenheim apricot tree today more closely and much to my surprise I think there is a tiny apricot growing out from where one of the blooms was earlier this month. If so it would be the first time these apricots have ever set fruit. I am really looking forward to seeing if they will produce for me. The Royal Blenheim has a chill hours requirement of 400 and the moorpark supposedly 600. Ironically the moorpark seems to be doing better than the other lower chill blenheim. My concern right now is my arkansas black apple trees. They have not yet broken dormancy and it's kind of late in the spring already. The Fuji and Pink Lady broke dormancy but not flowers this year. Ditto for the Gala, and Granny Smith.

Juan,glad you came. No apricot where not on the tasting table. A member gave me some last fall but couldn't remember what type of apricot it was the 1 on the table is what reminded her. She also gave me a jar of apricot jam that i forgot about. Just got into it today very good. What do you think about the group?i find it to be a interesting bunch of people. I'm really interested in how the black apple does I've never seen 1. Last week i got a bag of pink lady apples. Those are the best tasting apples I've ever had i hope yours does well. I have cuttings of a apple cactus if you want 1 ?they need a home.

Hi Glenn,

I liked the group meeting very much. As it happens the guest speaker this month was very interesting to me. You see I grew up in South Florida and I recognized all those areas shown in the pictures. It was like a blast from the past. Some of the images he showed predated my arrival in South Florida in June of 1970. So it was interesting to see how the region has evolved over time. Some of the tropical fruits he referenced I have first hand experience with and others were brand new to me. I also learned something about the King Orange New Years day parade that I used to watch as a boy growing up in Miami. Overall my sister and I had a really good time. She went with me because she likes gardening also and we both decide to join the group next month. I would have done it this week if it were possible to do so online but that feature seems to be missing from the group web site.

I agree about the pink lady apples. They are one of my favorite apples. I tend to like the sweet/tart tasting apples so I figured the Arkansas Black and Braeburn would be good additions to my orchard. These apples ripen their fruit much later than the lower chill apples like Anna and Dorsett Golden. I am told however that Anna also has a nice sweet/tart taste. I definitely have a nice crop of low chill apples this year. I would have had more had I not been so aggressive in my pruning late last year. Oh well nothing to do but wait for the tree to put on more branches. My moorpark apricot continues to surprise me. Today I noticed about 10 or 12 new blooms on there. My second moorpark apricot is also starting to put on new blooms. I think I hit the apricot tree jackpot with those two choices. Unfortunately so much of this is kind of hit or miss. You buy something and then you have to wait a bunch of years to see if your efforts will pay dividends.

Just out of curiosity has anyone ever tried growing a Cox Orange Pippin Apple tree in zone 9b? It is an old English antique apple that is supposed to have a nice flavor but every place I have seen it rates the tree in zones 5-8. I have a spot in my back yard that was recently vacated when an aberquina olive was transplanted to the front of the house. This spot is next to a large oak tree and I thought to myself.....this oak could shade a cox orange pippin tree during the worst part of the mid day sun while still allowing it to get sun during the morning and late afternoon. The chill hours (800) are a concern but I have heard that apples can be fooled into dormancy by manually defoliating them in December. So has anyone given this tree a try in Florida? If so please share your experiences in this forum.

Juan,I've never seen that type here. I've asked around and no one i know has ever tried to grow them. You would be a first that i know to try if you get one. Good luck

Some apricots and apples in my home orchard. These apples are supposed to be Anna, and Tropic Sweet. The apricot trees were sold to me as a moorpark apricot. Supposedly that variety has 600 chill hours. Even though we got no where near that amount of chill this year the one small tree did put out a nice bloom set. I tried to manually pollinate the flowers but I was only partially successful. A few fruit did form but most flowers withered and died without fruit set. Oh well maybe next year.

These apples are all from my Dorsett Golden tree. Notice the red tint to them. Last year this apple tree produced only one fruit. The fruit succumbed to some sort of fungus so I pulled it off before it reached maturity. However, it was completely green/yellow. There was no red in that fruit. Now this season these apples all have some red in them. What gives?

"Do you have any recommendations regarding the diseases and fealf insects?"

Hi,

For fungal issues I am using a copper based fungicide from Monterey called liquicop. You can find it here

https://smile.amazon.com/Monterey-Liqui-Cop-Natural-Fungicide-Prevention/dp/B000RUF56C/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1490233913&sr=8-2&keywords=monterey+fungicide

For soft bodied insects you have two choices. You can either use a broad spectrum insecticide (Sevin) which I do not recommend because it just kills too much including the good insects or a targeted insecticide or a better approach something organic. I actually have purchased boxes of lady beetles from a local nursery where I live and then released them into my home orchard. Some fly away never to be seen again but most stay nearby in the trees of my orchard. The ladybugs are voracious feeders and they will just ravage any soft bodied insects they encounter. The one problem with this....it attracts frogs to my trees who want to eat the ladybugs. Full circle I suppose but those bugs cost me my money and I did not buy them to be lunch for the local frog population. :-)

Here i s a video of my Anna apples just before I harvested them today.

Hi Folks,

I stumbled onto this article just now while searching google for information. Actually Kevin Hauser from Kuffle Creek Nursery in California has shown up in a few orchard culture videos created by Tom Spellman and his team from Dave Wilson nursery. I mention it because it shows that it is possible to grow lots of different types of apples in low chill areas of the Southeast if you pick ones that can tolerate our heat waves.

http://wunc.org/post/african-farmers-cultivate-apple-trees-historic-nc-orchard#stream/0

Enjoy!

Greetings Everyone,

Today I was surprised to find that my pink lady apple tree had bloomed for the first time ever since I planted it two years ago. It is an off season bloom and fearing that fireblight might translocate I went ahead and removed the flowers. I made a video before I do so as proof that this tree can produce fruit in East Central Florida zone 9b.

Enjoy!

Congrats Juan

Thanks Glenn. The Fuji apple tree right next to the Pink Lady hasn't bloomed yet but it is growing really well. Thankfully, since the end of the last El Nino event last year our climate has returned to a more normal pattern. All the rain that has fallen in the past month has really done wonders for the growth of the trees in my orchard. By the way the Everbearing Mulberry you gave me is now about 6 feet tall with huge leaves hanging off of it. I transplanted it into a larger pot but I am afraid to put it in the ground. It seems to be a very aggressive grower. I figured I will try to keep it pruned to about 10 feet or so in a large container because I am concerned about the spreading habits of the roots and my septic system/drain field. Just this weekend I also noticed that my Sugar Apple tree (Annon) has two tiny little fruits on it. It is a very neat looking fruit. I used to have one in my yard back when I was a child in 1976 or 1977. Every time I see one of those fruits it takes me back to my childhood in South Florida. Maybe I will post a video about it soon. My soursop tree is doing really well now after I transplanted it into a pot. The winters here are too cold for this tree to remain in the ground outside. In a pot I can bring it into the garage when the temperature drops too much. One more thing. I found a place in Fort Pierce, FL where it is possible to buy all sorts of citrus trees. It is called Nelson Family Farms located at the address below. You can find out more about them at their web site www.nelsonfamilyfarms.com. As you know there are lots of state regulations regarding the care, maintenance and sale of citrus. So many nurseries have decided not to carry them anymore and avoid the hassle. But if you really must have some citrus this is a good place to go get them. They are about one hour south of Palm Bay.

875 W. Midway Rd

Fort Pierce, FL 34982

Juan I would put the everbearing mulberry in the ground and I'm glad to hear that it's doing so well. That type likes to be a bush and doesn't spread or go evasive. Do you want a different type of mulberry? One that will grow into a tree. With bigger berries the taste better.

Thanks Glenn but I really have to pass on a second mulberry. In fact I have run out of room in my home orchard. Last time I counted I have over 70 fruit trees in my 0.5 acre lot. I do have one big Florida oak in the back yard that I cannot part with. It is too big to easily cut down and during the summer it just about provides the only shade in the yard. Anyway I have really run out of room. For me to add something new something else will have to die.

Thanks,

Juan

I understand Juan let me know if you change your mind I just cloned a bunch. I would love to see all your trees.

Hello everyone, I am from São Paulo State (Brazil), which was traditionally (back to 19th and 20th centuries) a great apple producer in Brazil (Campos do Jordão), with also sour-cherry farms around São Paulo City.

Our climate is pretty similar to your climate in Florida, except for the summers which aren't such as hot as yours. The highs usually get up to 32°C some days, but the regular highs in summer stay just at 26-27°C.

I would recommend you to measure the temperatures by yourself, do not trust official departments or meteorologists that much, because they can fail really hard most of the time. And I discovered it one year ago! I suddenly decided to plant raspberries because I wanted to pick fresh ones and they are pretty rare to find on markets in here. People think our climate "is too hot" for these things, even though we have regular frosts during June and July (and seriously, they keep on planting coffee plants, and they are all dying constantly!) and we might even have some in August and September. The problem is that our winter season basically only lasts from June to July... August is actually a transitional month to spring, and September is hot as hell (26-30°C are really common high temperatures in September, meanwhile lows are about 13-14°C).

When I started measuring temperatures by myself I realized that plants would correspond to the data positively. They would start dropping leaves as soon as mid-March (end of the summer/beginning of autumn here, southern hemisphere). I've came to the following mean month temperatures: January: 23°C, February: 22°C, March: 18°C, April: 16,7°C, May: 14°C, June: 12,3°C, July: 12,4°C, August: 14°C, September: 17°C, October: 22°C, November: 23°C, December: 23,5°C.

And my Heritage raspberries are doing REALLY well here, they taste as good as the ones produced in our mountains (which are the places people here believe to be the only ones with some possibility for this production kind). I will test some more raspberries varieties this year.

And just to answer, someone back in 2009 said that high-chill apples are produced in low-chill areas in South America. Well, that is actually not true... People here are not as curious and open-minded and they pretty much tend to close their minds to any possibility and blame the climate. Argentina has pretty much a temperate climate with mild-cold winters and the "apple-belt" in Argentina even receives regular snow. Same to the "apple-belt" in Brazil. They are located in mountain ranges (we call them "Serras") 2.000m above sea level. But they tend to fool everyone telling us that they can only produce Gala, Fuji and Granny Smith. And believe me, they frequently lie telling people these apple varieties need 700+ chill hours (yes, you've read it right). But I discovered that long ago all the apple production in Brazil was centered in Campos do Jordão, a region located in another mountain range in southeastern Brazil (Serra da Mantiqueira). The coldest month mean there is usually between 7 and 9°C which is actually really cold compared to Brazilian weather patterns, but it would be somehow similar to central-southern Italy maybe. And yes, they succesfully produced high-chill apples back in the 20th century. Unfortunatelly, they stopped the production and now they tell us it is impossible to produce these apples in Brazil and changed the orchard commercial varieties to poor-quality ones called "Eva" and "Julieta".

I've planted two Gala apple trees and one Fuji, hoping for the best. They started dropping leaves as soon as mid-March and were under deep dormancy about mid-May, they are still dormant right now so I do not really know what is going to happen. The weather has heaten up a bit (from 18-20°C highs to 23-25°c highs but lows are still around 9-10°C). In the brazilian apple-belts they start blooming around October, and around September in lower areas (so I think my trees [if they bloom] will bloom around September also).

My raspberry plants are definetely the easier ones to care and the most rewarding (until now at least).

Well, I'll keep you updated since it is obvious that if I succeed you will succeed too.

Greetings!

Henrique. Welcome to the forum. We would be interested in your results. Let use know how it goes.

Hey, check this forum: https://www.daleysfruit.com.au/forum/low-chill-apples-trees/

It seems like they are successfully growing Fuji, Pink Lady, Gala, Granny Smith, Jonagold in Brisbane (Australia). Even though the trees are quite "off-season". I guess it is just nature finding a way through the "difficulties".

Greetings

Juan, how the apples doing

My grandmother had a huge Granny Smith apple tree in Phx, AZ that fruited quite heavily. I am in zn 9a and the winters there were definitely warmer than here but may be more comparable with the Orlando area or south of there.

Good Day guys, was very interesting reading through your results on your orchard experiment, I live very close by Zone 9b, just off SanFillipo, I would very much like to know how the Fuji apples are doing, I have Dorset, Anna and Dolga crab apples at the moment, peaches, Nectarines, plums, and a host of tropical and subtropical trees, I mostly tried staying within the chill limits except for a Bonanza peach, however all the low chills fruit ripen in the summer would like to know what else is possible for our zone.

Thanks

Linval all kinds of stuff can be grow here. Sounds like you're close. One of my favorite is mulberry. Do you have any? Many types of banana do well. There are cherries, sounds like you got a great start. If you don't have any mulberry let me know I have extra.oh I forgot several types of pears.

Hi Glenn and Everyone else. It has been a while since I posted. My apple trees are doing well. I have added to my collection since we last spoke. My Anna and Tropic Sweet apple trees have doubled in size this year. They are both very vigorous growers. I am hoping to get a larger crop this year. I will say that the cold spell we had a couple of weeks ago seem to have satisfied the chill hour requirements for the low chill apples in my home orchard. The bout of warm weather after the cold spell has caused the Anna, Tropic Sweet and Pink Lady to break bud. The Tropic Sweet has put out one flower and a few tiny leaves. The Anna and Pink Lady just some new leaves. This is to be expected from such a low chill variety. My concern is if we get another really cold spell when they are in bloom that it might cause the flowers to drop and fruit set to fail. Have to wait and see what happens I guess. This year I ordered some new apple trees from a place in California called Trees of Antiquities. I have two additional Hudson's Golden Gem, two new Warren Pear trees, a Kidd's Orange Red, an Orleans Reinette, a Granny Smith, a King David and a Gold Kist Apricot. My Gold Kist apricot from last year died although the Braeburn apple tree I received at the same time grew fantastic this year. It put on alot of new growth. Oh and I almost forgot I got a new Fuyu persimmon for my home orchard from Trees of Antiquity also. I am really looking forward to these heirloom apple varieties. I find the selection from the supermarket to be really poor. My Fuji is growing well but has not broken dormancy yet. I am going to attach a video I made recently of my home orchard. It is rather long but it shows almost everything I have growing in my back yard. Unfortunately the new arrivals are not on there. I will make a new video this spring illustrating everything again.

Cheers,

Juan

Hi Juan, if possible can I have a cutting from your Pink lady to graft to one of mine.

Thanks Glen, yes I am very close, I have 2 small cuttings that have started off last year, ever-bearing variety, would like some Fig cuttings, I have a small Brown turkey at the moment, purchased a Black mission however the constant rains last season killed it to the ground, not sure if it will regrow.

Amazing garden Juan, looks really awesome.

Linval I can give you a cutting from celst fig it has a sucker with roots I was going to cut off

Ive also got some other types of mulberry trees a red mulberry and a white mulberry if you're interested

"Hi Juan, if possible can I have a cutting from your Pink lady to graft to one of mine."

Sure Glenn. As you can see the Pink Lady doesn't have alot of new wood. But this spring I am sure it will send up some new sprouts and I will cut you a piece of scion wood so you can graft. I think Pink Lady has already come off patent so there are no legal issues to worry about as well. I will let you know when I have the scion wood for you via a post on this forum.

Awesome Juan when ever you can no rush mine apples are growing very slow anyway. I just want to get a few types growing on each of my two trees. Pink lady is high on my list.

"Amazing garden Juan, looks really awesome."

I am glad you like it Linval. Sadly I have a feeling the citrus trees will eventually succumb to the yellow dragon disease. You can see one of the tangelos is kind of struggling. In one of incredible ironies I have found it easier to grow apples in Central Florida rather than citrus. All you need to do is make sure the apple tree is grafted onto M-111 root stock and that it can tolerate the high heat in your USDA zone. As it turns out most apples don't really require a whole lot of chill hours and many can adapt to our climate. I have found the varieties that were developed in Australia and New Zealand to be good choices for us here because they can tolerate the heat. Apart from fireblight which is always a concern for any tree on the rose family you also have to worry about fungus and diseases because of our humidity. So picking a russetted apple that is resistant to fungal diseases and scab is a good choice. The Arkansas Black and King David apple trees derived from it supposedly generate their own natural waxy coating that protects the apples from fungal diseases.

Cheers.

Glenn,

I am about to receive a new batch of fruit trees this coming January or February. I have limited space in my orchard so I am going to replace my pink lady and dorsett golden trees this year and I plan to uproot them in late December or early January. Do you want them? Be advised that I now have apple scab in my orchard and both the pink lady and dorsett golden are very susceptible to this disease. As you know apple scab is a fungal disease and can be managed with copper based fungicides and orchard hygiene. I also harvested and pruned several varieties of lemons (Eureka and Meyer) today. I have some bags I can give you of those two fruits. It is too many lemons for me to consume so I am having to give some of them away to family and friends. Let me know if you are interested in some of those as well. If you are send me an email to stony_brook_orchard at yahoo dot com. I am having to use phonetics because I don't want any email bots spamming my inbox.

Juan

Marry Christmas Jaun yes I am interested how ever I can't seem to get a email to you. It just keeps getting kicked back.

Email me

Glenn,

I sent you an email with just now from my yahoo account. Let me know if you don't get it within the hour.

Juan

Juan, I didn't get it . Fyi I got my truck running today