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sserendipityy starts with ... I am new to fruit gardening. I understand stone fruits have chilling hour requirements. However I live in northern NSW and love stone fruit. Is there anyone from northern NSW/southern QLD that has had any success with low chill varieties of stone fruit? What varieties are growing well? What do I need to be aware of before I grow stone fruits? Thank you | About the Author sserendipityy south lismore 8th January 2011 3:32pm #UserID: 4761 Posts: 12 View All sserendipityy's Edible Fruit Trees |
BJ says... Hi Sserendipityy; I'd recommend calculating the chill hours in your region first. I use a rough estimate with the formula: Chill hours = (-60 x coldest month average in degrees C) + 1400 My guess is that you'd get just over 200 chill hours. You can "fiddle" the chill hours a bit (planting location; chemical sprays; choice of rootstock etc) - but presuming you're going to get about 200 chill hours and you're not going to re-design your garden to alter that, you could try: # Peaches - Flordaprince, Tropic beauty, Flordaglo, Flordagem, or Newbelle # Nectarines - SunWright, sunraycer, Sunblaze # Apricot - Glengarry # Plums - Gulf Ruby # Cherries - Await upon release by Flemmings of the low chill varities in 2012 and then use all possible techniques to get yourself additional chill hours to reach their requirements! I know that there is a stone fruit industry in queensland - so you could look up the queensland DPI to find out if there are any special considerations in the sub-tropics. You probably have a very different disease profile to WA! | About the Author BJ11 WA 8th January 2011 5:03pm #UserID: 3414 Posts: 215 View All BJ11's Edible Fruit Trees |
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sserendipityy says... Thanks BJ. Until I started looking on the 'net I didn't know there were any stone varities I could grow. I also didn't really know what 'chill hours' meant . . . I knew it meant cold hours but how cold I had no idea, so thank you. Very exciting about the cherries. I heard that a way to increase chill factor was to plant dry ice near the root ball - have you heard of this? I am also hoping to grow in pots as I rent and want them to be mobile if necessary. I will look up QLD DPI as suggested also. | About the Author sserendipityy south lismore 8th January 2011 5:18pm #UserID: 4761 Posts: 12 View All sserendipityy's Edible Fruit Trees |
| About the Author Theposterformerlyknownas Brisbane 8th January 2011 6:58pm #UserID: 3270 Posts: 1552 View All Theposterformerlyknownas's Edible Fruit Trees |
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