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Post by jeff on Apr 23, 2017 3:00:53 GMT
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Post by thebastidge on Apr 24, 2017 17:28:30 GMT
I just started looking at these for the median between my sidewalk and the street. There are 3 or 4 types of apples, and that's about it as far as I can tell. Apples don't do so well in sub-tropics or tropics because they need a dormancy period.
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Post by jeff on Apr 25, 2017 3:06:35 GMT
It's easy enough to search for solutions...
Copied from a forum question on fruit in Hawaii
"Kenny, the apple problem is easy, but the peach problem, that I don't have any experience with.
First, forget about golden delicious, get rid of it, it will never do well in Hawaii. Anna (not Santa Anna) is an excellent apple for Hawaii, you might want to add the variety "Dorsett Golden", which is from the Bahamas and also low chill.
To get full sized apples, your trees will need a rest. That means don't let them crop more than once a year. Also, you need to defoliate the trees during the cooler rainy season. They will probably be bare for about 6 weeks or so. When the buds are pushing again, prune the ends to encourage growth. You want to time the defoliating to be about 6 weeks before the average start of the dry season so that it's mostly dry during bloom time.
Finally thin the apples a lot. Because they are not getting any chill at all, they will have limited vigor. That means they can't support as many apples as when grown in cooler climates. So remove lots of the fruit set, leave maybe one apple every second or third spur."
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Post by thebastidge on Apr 25, 2017 16:05:24 GMT
They have narrow growth habit peaches, but apples are the only ones that don't branch and have fruit spurs directly from the trunk so far. One thing that I have taken away from my permaculture studies. There are SO MANY underutilized fruit species that are native to just about anywhere you want to live, that you are better off choosing your plantation from something climate appropriate than trying to make do with some traditional crop we inherited from Northern European tradition. Many of these native species don't travel well, but if you're subsistence or supplemental farming, you don't care about shipping the produce. You consume directly, at the best peak of flavour. Another thing is, commercial crops are bred for flowering, fruiting, and picking all at once. A subsistence/supplemental farmer wants his harvest season to spread out as much as possible, so you don't have a glut of produce requiring immediate processing (or wasting it) and tons of extra/seasonal supplemental labour. Hawaii has an apple-like fruit that is native to the tropics: www.canoeplants.com/ohia.html
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Post by thebastidge on May 1, 2017 15:48:55 GMT
I found out that "Mountain Apple" is also called more widely called "Malay Apple" and is in cultivation all over Oceania and south Asia.
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