I’m new to apple growing in zone 9b with average chill hours of 500. I have three in ground, Anna, a Dolgo as a universal pollinator and a Grevenstein I purchased as a bare root over a year ago. On the sellers site they claimed it was correct for 9b. This year it was very late in leafing out and had no flowers. I researched and found that it requires 700+ chill hours. Question: will it ever produce fruit?
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I assume that the Gravenstein is on a MM111 semi standard rootstock. Perfectly normal to have no blooms in the second year then. I would not pay much attention to the chill hours. Gravenstein grows perfectly with ~500 chill hours in CA. Just have to make sure that a pollination partner is nearby that has overlapping bloom time.
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I am on an 8B microclimate of otherwise 9A territory. I would not think Gravenstein would fruit here. But I could be wrong. We get 700 plus chill hours about half the time. 625 to 675 the rest of the time.
Our problem with Dorsett Golden and Anna is the frost often kills the blossoms. We may keep them only as a scion source maybe.
But we could just replace them with traditional Southern heritage apples instead.
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This is what Kuffelcreek nursery says about chill hours (don’t worry about it):
About Pollination and Chilling Hour Ratings: We do not list blossoming times on our varieties, as in a warm climate the blossoming period is so strung out, there’s always something blossoming for six months out of the year and pollination is not a problem (you’ll have to forget a lot of the conventional wisdom about apples that you’ve been told from growing them in cold climates). The only varieties that are critical for needing pollinators are Anna, Dorset Golden, and Shell of Alabama, which will all pollinate each other and only each other. We don’t list chilling hours either, as we could care less what this arbitrary rating is; it doesn’t have much impact on tropic apple culture (again, forget conventional wisdom). See more on pollination at our YouTube channel here.
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Thanks. I really don’t now the root stock type. All information is a help. In have the Dolgo which is supposed to stay in flower across the other two.
This newbie thanks you for the info.
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I think that most traditional Southern apple varieties will do in your climate what you observed for Gravenstein: they will appear to come out late and also bloom over an extended period. I am probably in a very similar climate to yours and my apple trees bloom from about mid March to mid May. This is more of a problem for commercial growers, you can’t really run a tight spray program with insecticides and yields may be somewhat lower. I think that paying attention to resistance to brown rot is more important than to worry about chill requirements
Gravenstein is a major player historically in California (Sonoma County, if I recall), so chill hours should not be an issue for you in TX. It’s a triploid. You made a good move in getting two other cultivars, since its pollen will not set a crop on the others. Some heirloom varieties are slow to begin blooming; I do not know if Gravenstein might be among them.
Many of the apples I have started took a couple years to bloom. Give it time.
Thank you. I tried to study up before I jumped into unknown waters however there are so many variables based on ‘exact’ location and of course in ever changing. I’m convinced that a large percentage is trial and error.