A Necta-plum from our tree harvested in July 2010. |
Do you live in a warm climate and have less than 500 chill hours? “Rock star orchardist” Tom Spellman, with the Dave Wilson Nursery, has some suggestions for low chill fruit tree varieties based on productivity and performance. His recommendations:
- Dorsett golden apple
- Fuji apple
- Pink Lady apple
- Cot-N-Candy Aprium
- Flavor Delight Aprium
- Minnie Royal cherry
- Royal Lee cherry
- Arctic Star nectarine
- Double Delight nectarine
- Snow Queen nectarine
- Spice Zee Necta-Plum
- August Pride peach
- Donut peach
- Eva’s Pride peach
- Red Baron peach
- Burgundy plum
- Emerald Drop pluot
- Flavor Grenade pluot
- Flavor King pluot
- Splash pluot
Of the trees on this list, we’ve got the Spice Zee Necta-Plum, a beautiful tree with pink blossoms and red leaves in the spring that produces a super sweet fruit. It’s still too young to evaluate it’s performance but I’m happy to have it in our garden. We also have a Fuji apple that’s a few years old which is growing but has yet to produce fruit. Last year we also planted a Flavor Delight aprium (in a less than ideal location), and it’s also too early to evaluate its performance.
We sourced almost all of our trees by mail through the Bay Laurel Nursery, which carries Dave Wilson’s trees (Dave Wilson is wholesale only). Get your orders in now as Bay Laurel sells out of many varieties by the time they ship in February.
You can read the complete list of Tom Spellman’s low chill fruit suggestions with his comments here.
If you have mature versions of any of these trees please leave a comment and let us know where you live and how your trees are doing.
Thanks to Ari Kletzky for suggesting this list.