Who Needs Chill Hours?

The house where I grew up in Ohio had a large apple tree out back, just a few yards behind the house. Its fruit wasn't good-tasting, and nobody ever paid much attention to the hardy tree, but it did perform a service. Many a summer evening it would shade my father and me from the early evening sun as we sat out listening to Cincinnati Reds baseball games on radio. And as darkness fell on those warm, humid nights, it cast that ineffable big-tree presence that soothes as it somehow connects us to nature's deep forces.

When I came to Florida just over three years ago and started learning about fruit trees, I spurned the idea of growing apples here. In Florida's Best Fruiting Plants, the southern half of Florida doesn't even make it into the light green region of marginal apple productivity. It says the fruit is "poorly adapted to Florida growing conditions." Worse yet, "Most cultivars require cross-pollination from other cultivars to set fruit." Even tending to one apple tree sounded like an exercise in futility, let alone a second to pollinate it.

I was quite content with my mangos, avocados, and "rare" fruits, and the fine low-chill stone-fruit varieties that do so well here. So it was much to my surprise, a year ago, when I found myself bringing home an apple tree from the establishment of a local seller, whom I'll call Charlie since that's what everybody else calls him.

What opened my wallet was a vigorous-looking double-grafted apple tree--- the very-low-chill Golden Dorsett on an unknown rootstock, plus a grafted branch of the Anna variety. I planted the complex beauty in a sunny, well-drained irrigated spot near the colder west end of my land. I oriented it with the Anna branch on the south side, where it gets first crack at the sunlight.

Sources say that Golden Dorsett requires 100 to 200 chill hours, and Anna 250 to 300. This past winter, of course, was a one-day wonder, and up to that point it seemed like we had endured all of two or three chill hours. My Florida peaches and plums made fruit, no problem. And the apple(s)? Well, miracles do happen. Branches from both varieties bloomed like crazy, and at least three little fruits are underway on the Golden Dorsett branches. It remains to be seen whether they last to maturity--- and if so, whether they are any good--- but my apple-growing project has already exceeded expectations. And maybe I'll show up with some Sarasota apples for a summer tasting table.