In My Garden: Apples!

This year I have an amazing amount of apples on my trees, and they are crispy and sweet/tart. There is nothing as good as home-grown fruit. When I bought my property, 28 years ago, I started planting fruit trees. I am partial to the exotic fruits such as cherimoya, dragon fruit, and jujubes to name a few. But my wife Laura enjoys apples, oranges, nectarines, etc. So we have a mix of the exotics and the more everyday fruits. The apples in the photo are Golden Dorsett’s, they ripen in June and July.

Apples are a great fruit to grow because you can do so much with them. You can eat them right off the tree of course but you can also bake with them, juice them, puree them, dry them, cook with them, so many uses. Laura even found a recipe for apple vodka! (Although we tend to lean more towards baked apple crisp than apple vodka).

Most people in Southern California coastal areas don't know you can grow great apples along the coast. They think of apples being grown in Julian or other cold mountainous areas. But in fact there are many very good apple varieties we can grow.

One of the main issues here is the chill factor requirement for apples, which is the number of hours under 45 degrees during the year. The coastal areas have less cold nights than the mountains so the required chill hours for certain varieties needs to be less, about 200 to 300 hours. Growers achieve this, in part, by grafting a good tasting fruit to a root stock with low chill hours. Grafting trees has been done for hundreds of years and is not new, but as of late much more interest has been shown by home growers in the art of grafting which has pushed more research by both nurseries and home-orchard enthusiasts. 

Don't be afraid to invest in a few apple trees for your coastal gardens. Here in Southern California we are very lucky to be able to grow in our gardens year round, and that includes apple trees. Just make sure to purchase trees with low chill hours.