Phoenix Tropicals Gardening

[phoenixtropicals]

The AZRFG plant sale was a lot of fun today. The speaker on growing apples in warm climate was very good. He has had success growing many varieties that are not traditionally expected to do well with low chill hours. Here is a link to his website for more info.

http://www.kuffelcreek.com/apples.htm

[ajbcirc]

I've successfully grown "standard" Fujis in Scottsdale for the last few years. My trees were planted as bare roots in 2007 and started fruiting in 2010. I get roughly 400 hours where I live (Cactus and 101).

Here's one of my trees in September of 2010. I put this up on another gardening website.





The tree is a lot bigger today, but the fruit continues to be small, especially compared to my Golden Dorsetts and Annas. The quality and taste of the apples are excellent, however.

I haven't had much success with a number of other "higher chill" varieties. I've planted six additional varieties -- Arkansas Black, Hawaii, William's Pride, Pink Lady, Tropic Sweet, Gala, and Red Fuji. Arkansas Black fell flat on its face and barely leafed out year one and got pulled. Pink Lady did ok the first year and then barely leafed out this spring. It went to the compost heap. William's Pride is doing ok, but I have it on some sort of non-standard rootstock (Geneva 20), and it suffers from chlorosis all the time. Gala and Hawaii are also just barely hanging in there. Only Tropic Sweet, a Florida "Macintosh-like" variety that requires 200 hrs of chill, and Red Fuji are looking healthy.

I think you'll get fruit with some varieties that don't get enough chill, but I don't think Hauser is correct though that any apple with grow and fruit here. A lot of the higher chill scions can't really take our heat or our water and they really don't have much vigor. The trees look weak and wimpy, barely push out much growth, and there's lots of bare, uncovered wood. If you look at Hauser's pictures of apples growing in the tropics on his website, a lot of the fruiting trees there look pretty pathetic as well. Often, they're flimsy whips with a few apples hanging by threads.

So, yes, Fujis can grow in Phoenix. I just don't have much hope that many other varieties will do just as well or as well as they may be doing in Riverside.

[phoenixtropicals]

Great information thanks. I think you are right that Kevin Hauser can't really say that what grows in Riverside will grow equally well in Phoenix.

We are a lot hotter and drier than Riverside. Yes, maybe every now and then they are just as hot but climates are really about averages not extremes. Their lack of chill hours may be similar to ours but our summers are much more brutal. Of course our soil and water is different too.

That's great that you got Fuji's going. I'm not all that impressed with the Golden Doresetts and Annas quality wise but a Fuji would be worth the trouble to grow.

Also to give Kevin some benefit of the doubt, he is using some special rootstock. Rootstock can make a huge difference and its possible that a Gala on M111 would be vigorous in our soil and stay ahead of the sunburn, being able to pump out enough leaves to shade itself, and therefore act like a completely different tree.

For exmaple, I tried Royal Lee and Minnie Royal cherries on Colt rootstock a couple of years ago and they did horrible. I now have them on 3CR178 and they are really doing well. No fruit yet because it hasn't been a year yet and I planted them last winter, but they are like a totally different tree.

[ajbcirc]

Almost all of my apples are on M111, which is also the preferred rootstock for California. My only apple not on M111 is William's Pride, as I had to buy it from Cummins Nursery in New York on Geneva 20 (a dwarfing rootstock similar to Bud-9).

I don't know if Hauser mentioned this or not, but according to his eBook "Growing Apples in the City" in his climate Golden Dorsett and (somewhat less so) Anna are not just growth winners, but taste fantastic. Here, unless perfectly picked, both are fairly bland in Phoenix. That's because his apples don't ripen in the 105 degree temps of June and July, which does a number on fruit quality (most summer apples are generally lousy anyway because of that).

As a corollary, I've often said that avocados have always been a fool's errand in Phoenix, not only because they're so $#%&@ hard to grow, but because the fruit quality is likely to be poor due to the continuous heat as well.

BTW, did your jackfruit seedling sell?

[phoenixtropicals]

Sounds like you know your apples. So, everything you have is on M111, interesting. Your fuji looks great. Maybe I can just find a Fuji in Home Depot then if the M111 is common.

Yes, the jackfruit sold. I sold it to a friend at a reduced price. I don't really like the fruit too much so it was just a lark to grow it. It was the only surviver of 4 of them that I overwintered on my patio out back last winter. I grew them all from seeds from a fruit I got at Li li's. Jackfruit do not like our winters. The prolonged cool days and cold nights seems to make them ill even if they don't outright freeze. Maybe this one is a cold hardy mutant.. ha ha.

I have a Winter Mexican avocado that I believe will ripen in the winter. Maybe that is the key. I almost killed it about two years ago which really set it back but its really starting to come back now.

ajbcirc - Who are you? I obviously know you in the real world. Ha ha.