Chill hours??

[Deer Fanatic]

What constitutes a chill hour? I am thinking of adding some apple trees to my arsenal of deer food. The ones I found range from 300 to 800 chill hours. So, what is a chill hour and will I get enough... 75 miles north of the Fla. line.

 

[Canuck5]

I'll throw this out to you, for varieties to consider and what the right conditions there are to grow them, based on your location.

https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/MG/MG36800.pdf

Since I am soooooooooooo lazy, my preference is to grow persimmons, keifer pears and chestnuts. I do really very little work on them.

https://gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/plants/trees-and-shrubs/trees/chestnut.html

 

[treemanjohn]

I would consider crabapple

 

[Deer Fanatic]

I would consider crabapple

I have.... or rather had several crab apple trees. They have always had tons of fruit and the deer hammered them. Bout 3 years ago or so one of them turned brown about halfway through the summer and bit the dust. Must have been some sort of disease. This year my biggest one was loaded with fruit and the same thing happened to it.

 

[Crakajak]

I would consider keieffer pears,and other fruit trees than apples.Lots of maintenence with apples.Had several on my farm. Of different varieties ....very few produced many apples.I was in west central ga.