Southern heritage fruit trees are valued for their historical significance and unique flavors
Questions & Answers (Q&A)
1 Question: What are Chill Hours?• Usually means a regions accumulated hours spent at temperatures between 32 and 45 degrees for a season. For the basis of apple and fruit tree selection, best practice is to use your regions annual average chill hours for the last 5 years.
2 Question. What do Chill Hours mean for apple and fruit trees?
• Apple and fruit trees usually require a certain amount of Chill Hours to wake up from winter dormancy, bloom, & fruit. This is the accumulated chill hours in a single season which the tree should be exposed to between 32 -45 degrees. For a tree to succeed in a region the average accumulated chill hours for the region should exceed the chill hour requirement for the fruit tree which are the trees exposed to temperatures between 32-45 degrees. The actual chill hours for an area should exceed the chill hour requirement for the fruit tree to produce fruit.
• Imagine the fruit tree is a hard worker who needs a mandatory, deep winter nap to be ready for the busy spring and summer seasons. "Chill hours" are simply the total number of hours the tree spends sleeping in the sweet spot of cold weather specifically between 32 and 45 degrees. This long, cool rest is crucial. Without enough of these specific chilly hours, the tree gets groggy and confused; it won't wake up properly, the buds won't open correctly, and it won't have the energy to produce healthy fruit in the spring. Think of it like a minimum vacation requirement: different types of trees need different lengths of "vacation" time below that temperature threshold to recharge their batteries and perform their job (making fruit) well.
3 Question. What is the ideal soil type for fruit trees? • Fruit trees thrive in well-drained soils. Avoid heavy clay or low-lying areas where water pools. The most ideal soil pH for fruit trees is around 6.2–6.8. Prior to planting fruit trees, best practices recommend a soil test for the desired location, describing fruit trees as the crop in the soil test application, and to your local extension agent. Your extension agent should be able to advise on what soil amendments to add to your soil based on your soil test.
• For soils being prepared for apple or fruit trees orchards it is recommended to start with a Calcium Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC) of 65%-75% followed by Magnesium, then Potassium aiming for recommended Ca:Mg:K ratio of 13:2:1 for planting. • Special note related to soil & apples, best practice for controlling bitter pit disease starts with the soil. For apples trees, the Calcium (CEC) and Ca:Mg:K ratio is as important as is regular irrigation and the balancing of nutrients to control tree over growth.
4 Question. When is the best time to plant a fruit tree? • When trees are dormant later preferably mid to late winter is generally an ideal time to plant as fruit trees require less watering for establishment.
5 Question. How much sun do fruit tree need?
• Most fruit trees, including apple, require full sun, which means a minimum of 6 to 8 hours
of direct sunlight daily for best growth and fruit production.
6 Question. How far apart should I plant my fruit trees?
• Spacing depends on your selected rootstock size and planting type. We recommend
apple & fruit trees we sell here at Fruit-Whips.com be planted as follows in most home
landscape settings:
o 10’ minimum spacing G890 rootstock
o 18’ minimum spacing Malus Domestica Seedling rootstock
o 18’ minimum spacing B118 rootstock
7 Question. Do I need more than one tree for pollination?
• Yes, most fruit trees require a pollinator of a different variety to produce fruit. Even with
self-fertile trees it is recommended for better pollination to have two different variety
trees for better fruit production. Self-fertile apple trees are rare but they do exist some
examples:
o Hudson Golden Gem
o Morgans Christmas
o Reverend Morgan
o Shell of Alabama
8 Question. How often should I water a newly planted fruit tree? • Provide adequate water to newly planted trees to help establish their root systems. A general guideline for apple and fruit trees is: o First 2 weeks: Water daily to keep the soil consistently moist approximately 2 gallons a day. o Week 3-5: Decrease interval to 2 gallons every two days. o Week 6-12: Decrease interval to 3 gallons every 3 days o After 12 weeks: Decrease interval to 5 gallons once a week until the tree is established, typically one year, depending on growth. o After a year: Rainfall supplemented with normal landscape irrigation should be adequate.
o Droughts: During dry periods, you will need to water more frequently
9 Question. When and how should I prune my fruit tree? • Most major pruning is best done in the winter while the tree is dormant. Focus on removing dead or diseased branches, improving airflow, and shaping the tree. We recommend not pruning more than a 1/3 of the branching during a pruning season. Over pruning tends to stimulate to much unwanted over growth
10 Question. When should I start fertilizing my fruit tree? • Best practice is to wait on applying any balanced fertilizer for at least the first month. However, applying a prescribed amount of liquid starter fertilizer as labeled around the outside perimeter of the root ball will be ok if done carefully as labeled. When fertilizing be sure to follo
11 Question. How long does it take for apple or fruit trees to bear fruit? • Typically apple and fruit varieties on dwarf and semi dwarf rootstock such as apple varieties on Geneva series rootstocks similar to G890 are precocious in nature leading to fruit production much sooner in the trees life. The time it takes for fruit to bare varies by type, variety, and rootstock. Apples and pears can take 2-5 years, or more in some instances. Peaches and plums may fruit in the second year.
12 Question. What makes the apple varieties from Fruit-Whips.com suitable for Southern climates?
• The Fruit-Whips.com nursery emphasis is on disease-resistant, heat tolerant, drought tolerant apple trees and fruit trees with a documented southern historically significance. We’ve uncovered history for southern apple & fruit trees which once thrived in the deep hot humid South subjected to same common disease issues like; fire blight, apple scab, apple cedar rust, and bitter pit, that we fight today. The proposed best practice to offsetting environmental conditions and addressing apple disease prevention is to start with natural systemic attributes of the varieties themselves.
13 Question. How are varieties selected for inclusion into Fruit-whips.com inventory?
• To make these selections, Fruit-Whips.com has referred to the historical archives of southern historical societies and state archives to find historical nursery catalogs listing apple and fruit trees which were actually sold in the region by nurseries going back to the 1700’s long before the U.S. centralization of apple and fruit tree agriculture. FYI, Google searches tend to populate the most sought after heirloom apple varieties when folks search for heirloom apples… Not because there the best choice, but simply due to folks unintentionally making them the most relevant to Google’s algorithm due to folks searching for the variety. When in reality some of the best variety names are obscured by history and as a result rarely searched for. Centralization of agriculture once lead to a great extinction event of many great apples of the past. We at here Fruit-Whips.com here are trying our best to not allow
technology to get into the way of the revival of what is left of these great apples and fruits.
14 Question. Why do old nursery catalogs matter?
• During pre-1900’s fruit tree nurseries had no reason to be selling apple and fruit tree varieties which were not suitable for the area they operated in. People in the South depended on the success of these apple and fruit tree varieties which the nurseries sold to them for farming subsistence. With that, what we find written in these historical nursery catalogs are priceless long forgotten subsistence knowledge about the apple trees and fruit trees for the entire U.S Southeast including: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.
15 Question What are some lessor known rare southern varieties available at
Fruit-whips.com today?
• Blackwater River (Also known as the Big River)
• Black Gilliflower
• Cannon Pearmain
• Carters Blue
• Cauley
• Horse
• Kinnards Choice
• Meyers Royal Limbertwig
• Morgans Christmas
• Orange Cauley (A Cauley Sport)
• Reverend Morgan
• Shell of Alabama
• White Winter Pearmain
Note: While searching for the one that brought you here, please be sure to consider these to as valuable southern heirloom choices… and, Please be sure check back next year, due to varieties we located recently in local history records our list will grow greater than two fold in the coming year as we will be propagating some these discoveries next spring.