Phoenix Tropicals Gardening

[mullenium]

Just picked up a Fuji apple from home depot, planted it in the middle of my north facing backyard.. filled with probably a 50/50 or 60/40 of compost to native soil (new housing subdivision so the native soil is so compacted and clay like)

Anyone have experience growing apples? or maybe the Fuji in particular.. not many resources growing them in phoenix area online like there is tropicals...

Im in Maricopa so the chill requirements should be ideal for apple

[phoenixtropicals]

Hi Brandon,

The best apples for the lower desert are Anna and Golden Dorsett, and they cross pollinate each other. By best, I don't mean best tasting, just that they grow and produce the best. Neither Anna nor Dorsett are very exciting flavor wise. Maybe a fuji will work out where you are. Let us know.

[ajbcirc]

An update on Fujis.

I planted two trees about three years ago. Home Depot trees on M-111 rootstock. Both have massive trunks now and behave better than all of my other fruit trees in full sun.

I finally got fruit on one of them this year. Six apples total and the trees are 7 feet tall with huge branches. The apples were small, like the ones they grow in Wilcox for places like Whole Foods, but very sweet with orange flesh. Supposedly it takes four years after planting for them to start producing bumper crops, so we'll see how things go next year. I did add a Gala to the yard for cross pollination this year, which may have affected things as well, but supposedly Fujis are self fertile and are known to take years to start fruiting.

Meanwhile my Dorsetts produces bushels upon bushels of apples yearly.

[phoenixtropicals]

Probably the nasty freezes we had this winter, which were disaster for tropicals, were great for your apple trees. Which goes to show, it's all relative ha ha.