Hello to all apple lovers, especially you fellow Floridians. I am just northwest of Lake Okeechobee and I wanted to share with you a wonderful website I discovered about 6-7 years ago.
www.kuffelcreek.com He grows apples in the tropics - he himself started out growing them in California, and for years he had a picture of his backyard full of fruiting apple trees and the thermometer at 113. You read his explanation of chill hours and it turns out that what chill hours do is synchronize bloom, fruit set and harvest. Important if you're a commercial grower, less important if you just want apples whenever the tree provides them. He says in the hot zones you can have bloom, ripe fruit, and green fruit all on the tree at the same time. He also lists his favorite hot weather apples, the ones that taste good and do well, and Fiji does grow well in the heat, - but doesn't fruit till it's 5 years old. We had a 3 in 1 low chill apple that produced a flush of Anna apples and the raccoons got them just as they started to ripen. That straggled along and died a few years later. I have discovered that this sugar sand doesn't work for most of my fruits- so now I am growing them in 35 gallon containers. I bought Grandfatherbear another 3 in 1 apple at his request, but this time it's in a pot. This year I planted summer champion, pound sweet, another William's Pride and brogden (low chill from Alabama). Last year I planted King David, Arkansas Black, Hoover (low chill from coastal SC) Victorian Limbertwig, White Winter Pearman, and Golden Grimes. Now, Golden Grimes is my favorite. Doesn't ship well because it is so tender, but tastes wonderful and makes translucent applesauce. It was a parent of Golden Delicious.Wealthy and Terry Winter Keeper also. I also have a William's pride that's a few years older-maybe 4 or 5 years old? I strongly encourage you to visit the Kuffel Creek website and then check old the book Old Southern Apples by Lee Calhoun. It has guided a LOT of my choices. I bought the Kuffel Creek book about growing in the city years back- really need to buy his book about growing apples in the tropics now. He has gone into the apple in the tropics business bigtime- he is consulting with tropical African and SE Asian growers. I bought most of my apples from
www.bighorsecreekfarm.com or Raintree Nursery. Highly recommend both their businesses. Next year's order from Bighorsecreekfarm is the Rev Morgan, a low chill apple from South Texas, more Golden Grimes, King David, and ....I forgot the last variety. I'm sure I ordered 4.
I'm just a newby here but I've been working on my apples for quite a while now. Pettingill, my original 3 in 1 anna, dorset, ein schmeir, yellow transparent, and separate trees of anna and dorset died within a few weeks of planting in the ground here. As I said, I'm now doing the 35 gallon pots, and they are living and every now and then I get bloom- and have some apples started on the Terry Winter (which lost green fruit in a winter gale)
Oh, columnar apples- I gave Scarlet Sentineland Golden Sentinel to my dd and family when they moved to their townhouse in South Carolina. They planted them in small half barrels- I really am not even sure they were 12 gallons. As long as I got up there to fertilize them in the spring and they got watered onc a week they would bear a handful of fruit apiece. The Golden did grow one branch like a second trunk. I think they may have gotten more with larger pots and more fertilizer. I try to add 8-8-8 to my apples, and keep Grandfatherbear from applying Miraclegro- because I read somewhere they don't like nitrogen (but nitrogen degrades quickly in our Florida heat- I have taken to giving lots of nitrogen tomy Irish potatoes in winter, and my yield went up from 1-2 per plant to 6-10 per plant!) Maybe I should rethink the Miraclegro ban.