I picked up a Champaign yesterday with fruit on it. I really liked it, very sweet. I also picked up a Sherry and the fruit was tart but good. My GN and Big Al haven't fruited yet and the big tree in my yard is so so tasting. I say go for it.

What I have done over the years was both shoot and fence. I put around deer sensitive trees  simple fence barrier. Some trees deers don't really care about so can be skipped. It isn't fool proof as bucks apparently do not care one way or the other when it comes to a tree to rub its antlers on thus destroying said tree. I have taken a lot of mango, lychee and sugar apple damage that way. But on the other hand, they wont eat those same trees. Same with loquat. The don't eat it but love to use them as a scratching post.  Trees I find they eat the hell out of are apple, citrus, plum, mulberry. Mulberry isn't a big loss, as it seems to bounce back bigger and bushier with more fruit than before, think of it as natural pruning. The other two are more disastrous as they are very slow growing. I use simple 4 foot wire fencing and try and get a good distance around the tree. To make life easier I fill the area inside the fence with mulch.

At night when I come home later I will often drive into the yard hoping not to see eyes looking back at me. When I do I go inside, grab my shotgun loaded with birdshot and go hunting. Wife calls me Elmer Fudd. Bird shot will sting them but wont penetrate their thick hide at the ranges I am shooting them. I have been hit at that range on bare skin and aside from going "ouch ouch ouch, hot hot hot" I had no other reaction except to yell at my dad for shooting in my general direction. Thankfully(or not) we have had a large group of coyote enter the neighborhood as well as more frequent panther sightings and I have seen a correlating reduction of deer sightings. Unfortunately have also lost our resident turkey population I always enjoyed watching stroll across the yard.

I am in Northern Central FL in between Orlando and Cocoa and I have both and while I get a couple apples from each, apples are easily one of the slowest growing group of trees I have. Dorsett I believe comes from Jamaica(or maybe its Anna) and should eeek along like mine does. But don't expect anything great or massive. I am curious as to how this past winter's cold will improve things.

Two others you may want to check out that have been more productive than Anna and Dorsett for me are Tropic Sweet and Emshimer. Both are slightly more vigourous and have gotten more apples off them in three years than I have gotten off my A and Ds combined in 6.

Several weeks later, damage is still pretty bad.
Jackfruit, despite being covered fried and the branches snap fairly easy. I think they are toast.
Mangoes are still iffy.
Sweet tart while losing all of its leaves and branches snap fairly easy, has new growth coming out from the trunk.
Lemon Zest rubbing the bark shows green so I think it will come back.
Cotton Candy lost the upper 2/3rds but bottom third has green leaves.
Graham lost all leaves and I haven't rubbed bark to see if its green under.

Barbados cherry no sign of life
Sugar Apples(all types) no signs of life. (not unexpected since they normally lose leaves for winter anyway)
Melon Berry, raison tree, che, ice cream bean, java plum, moringa, pintanga, pitangatuba, all gauavas except Lemon(no damage at all), African Sausage, carambola, mountain annonna, black sapote, no signs of life

Other trees that lost all leaves but have new shoots:
Jamun, white sapote, wax jambu, all Jaboticabas,

With the cold having killed off a good chunk of my tropicals, I was thinking on more temp hardy trees. I grew up on an island in GA with 50 foot tall pecan trees all over the place that were completely without any sort of care. Any advice on keeping them here in central Florida? My local Tractor supply has a couple varieties I was going to grab.

Same problem on my Lemon Zest. I saw several spots that looked like brownish red bubbles appearing to be sap. We had temps in the upper 20s for several nights. Not a single green leaf on them currently but scratching the bark reveals green. Spray it with neem?

I am still hoping its just the leaves that are burnt and the trees will come back. I know my last try on mangos years ago had one freeze to the ground so I pulled it and placed it in the back 40 in the land that I dont really do much in. It has come back although its a bush not a tree. It seems to not have cared about the recent cold either.

@John, I dont think any of us have issues in the warm weather here aside from the damn weevils. Its the cold that suddenly kicked our butts.

I dont doubt you but I have never heard of wood alcohols being an issue in fermented drinks and one of my groups I belong to makes a lot of home brewed drinks.

With mead unless you live near a bread factory it probably wont ferment on its own. A friend of mine experimented with this exact thing and failed until he set up his must at his friend who lived near a bakery. The result was horrible though. Plus buying yeast specifically grown for specific types of brewing gives a far superior product in both taste and alcohol content. Besides, they are like 3 bucks or less a packet for a consistent product.

27 here in east Orlando. Glad I remounded most of my trees that needed it. In the process I discovered inner branches that still had green leaves on several of them that were under the mounds previously. No frost which was nice.

Lychee are ok. With these cold weather spells supposedly going to get worse as the years go by due to sun activity I would say no to the other two. Loquats though are a great  low maintenance tree that both look good and have good fruit. Despite the cold I have had good luck with key lime also.

I feel your pain despite being in central Florida. This last blast kicked my trees in the nuts. I need to pull my potted ones for this new one tonight. If nothing comes back I have right around 40% loss at this point of around 100 trees. I too am thinking cooler weather trees too as scientists are predicting a low sun activity period for the next couple decades meaning much cooler weather for awhile.

At this point, aside from covering the mangoes again and mounding their bases in hopes of mitigation I cant see more damage being done than has already been inflicted.