I continue to plant apple trees in my yard because my kids eat so many and they’re easy to grow.
Yes, apples are very easy to grow in Southern California. Some of the best varieties even grow well here despite apples being associated with colder climates. In fact, I’ve found that my apples tolerate heat waves better than my avocados.
Varieties
Everyone likes different apples; my wife prefers a tart Granny Smith whereas I prefer a sweet Granny Smith. Wait, that’s the same apple. But you can pick it early (tart) or late (sweet-tart).
There is something to keep in mind: each apple variety changes in flavor during its season of maturity. You’ll never find a sweet Granny Smith in a grocery store, but that is only because farmers never harvest Granny Smiths as late as you can from your own tree, which is when they start to taste “like a bottle of Martinelli’s,” as a friend of mine put it.
Here is a list of varieties that I know firsthand to be satisfactory to many gardeners in Southern California. That is, I’ve seen them with my own eyes in person in different gardens where they grow happily, fruit abundantly, and taste good (although that part is subjective):
Sundowner (pictured at very top)
Gala (I grow the Buckeye Gala)
There are a hundred other varieties that I’ve seen or heard of doing well in limited Southern California locations. If there is an apple variety that you like to eat, I would try to grow it regardless of what anyone says about that possibility. You have to discover for yourself.
I am currently trying out a handful of varieties that aren’t commonly grown in Southern California, and I’m finding that some don’t perform well but some do. This year I got my first crop of Hudson’s Golden Gem, an old variety from Oregon that came to me via a friend on the Central Coast. It is productive and uniquely delicious.
Incidentally, Hudson’s Golden Gem also did well in a trial planting in Irvine so I shouldn’t be surprised.
On the one hand, it’s overwhelming to have to choose from so many apple varieties, but on the other hand, it’s a blessing to have so many options because they all mature at different times, from early summer through the fall and winter. As a result, with three trees, say Anna, Gala, and Pink Lady, you can have fresh apples to eat most days from June all the way until January.
Training and pruning
I have come to prefer shaping apple trees to a central leader shape rather than an open center shape. What this means is not cutting off the main, central trunk while the tree is young (which begins to create an open center). Or at least, if you do cut off the central leader in order to induce new branches down low, then allow the center to fill back in with enough branches to prevent sunburn.
My property had multiple mature apple trees on it when I moved in in 2013, and one was pruned to an open center shape and all of the branches facing south or southwest had sunburn damage and borer damage (borer insects are attracted to sunburned bark). The tree couldn’t shade itself.
A couple of the other apple trees had branches in the center and no sunburn.
For the new apple trees I have planted, I have usually not cut their leader.
Here is the same Fuji tree today.
But here is a Pink Lady apple tree that had no side branches (a “whip” they call it). So I cut the leader to get some branching:
I allowed the center of this Pink Lady to fill with branches, and I did not try to spread the two main branches, and the tree never got sunburned.
If you want to keep an apple tree down to a particular size, then it’s easiest to prune in the winter when you can see the branches without leaves. Do be aware that apples in Southern California lose their leaves late, at the very end of winter, and sometimes they don’t even lose them all.
There has been an idea floating around for many years that you should manually strip an apple tree’s leaves at some point in the winter in order to “force dormancy.” I have searched and asked around for evidence that this is beneficial but have never found any. On my trees, I have always allowed them to lose (or not lose) their leaves naturally and they have always bloomed and fruited well.
During winter pruning, keep in mind where apple trees make flowers (and therefore fruit). Apples flower at the tips of branches and on spurs. Spurs are stubby little things that form along the sides of a longer branch.
This means: don’t cut the tips of branches or the spurs if you want maximum flowering and fruiting.
But how do you reduce the size of a tree if you don’t cut branch tips? You may have to cut some branch tips, but you can usually accomplish size reduction by entirely removing some of the tallest/longest branches and leaving alone (the tips) of the rest of the branches. (This is called making “thinning” cuts.)
Fruit thinning
Fruit thinning is where you remove some fruit so that the tree’s overall fruit quantity is reduced. Apples make clusters of five flowers (usually five), and all five often become fruit.
My routine is to reduce each cluster to two. Some apple growers thin to only one.
I also thin to one apple per cluster if there are too many clusters on a single branch, especially a branch that’s thin, and especially near the tip of such a branch.
Why thin apples? A big, old apple tree can handle a heavy crop and not be thinned at all and yet still yield big, quality apples. However, a smaller, younger apple tree will break its branches or be badly sunburned if you do not limit the amount of fruit it holds. I broke a branch on my young Gala tree this summer because I hadn’t removed enough apples.
Another reason to thin is to make the remaining apples grow larger. I have read that apples must be thinned within a month of bloom or else the size of the mature apples will not be affected (positively). I don’t know if this is true. I haven’t tried to test it out on my own trees. Regardless, I aim to thin my apples as soon as they reach cherry size.
I find scissors or Felco 320 snips to be the best tools for thinning apples. Apples are hard to thin by hand because the stems are strong (compared to peaches, for example).
Flowering and pollination
Apples flower later than most other deciduous fruit trees (think: apricots, plums, peaches). Also, they sometimes flower again in the summer. This happens with certain varieties (such as Anna) and it can also be instigated by a heat wave.
If you want the most apples from a given tree, it is usually advised to have another variety of apple nearby for cross pollination. But this is certainly not always necessary. I’ve seen many single apple trees in Southern California that produce very well without any other apples nearby. Some such single trees I’ve seen are Fuji, Anna, Dorsett Golden, Pink Lady, Sundowner, Gala, and Granny Smith.
There is a lot of information out there about the needs of different varieties for cross pollination, and the other apple varieties that can be used as pollenizers, but sometimes the information conflicts between sources as well as with my own observations.
For example, Orange Pippin says Fuji is “not self-fertile.” However, I have seen numerous lone Fuji apple trees in Southern California with abundant crops.
Another example: Dave Wilson Nursery says Sundowner is “self-fruitful” on their entry for Home Gardeners. Yet on their entry for Commercial Growers it says for Sundowner that “a pollenizer is recommended for maximum productivity.” Are these both accurate? What should you do? Plant a lone Sundowner tree or also plant a pollenizer variety?
The good news is that apple trees are easy to keep small so you can plant two apple trees very close together and grow them as a single unit. In other words, don’t think that you need the yard space for two full trees in order to grow two varieties. At my previous house in San Diego, I planted Anna and Dorsett Golden trees one foot apart and they grew happily in the space of a single tree. It so happens that a friend did the same in his yard:
Apples are also easy to graft, easier than many other types of fruit trees. You can graft on a second variety onto a tree in order to ensure maximum pollination and fruit on the main variety. You can also graft on new varieties to a single tree to test how they perform in your yard rather than dedicating entire new trees.
(Here is a post about grafting a branch into an established tree.)
Watering
Apple trees in my yard want about as much water as pears, peaches, and apricots. Here is a post with details: “How much to water a fruit tree in Southern California, roughly.”
But this does depend on the rootstock, among other factors. Some old apples in my yard have been tougher in drought than some old apricot and nectarine trees. And some young apples have been needier than nearby apricots and pluots.
Also, curiously, I have seen apple trees in Southern California doing well with zero irrigation.
Rootstocks
Most of my apple trees are on a rootstock called M-111. It’s the most common rootstock used for most grafted apple trees sold at nurseries in Southern California, and this is because it has a long track record of performing well here.
I have found M-111 satisfactory in my yard, but it does have a couple of quirks. One is that it forms burr knots.
Two is that it sends up rootstock suckers. See above.
Neither of these characteristics is a big problem. Both occur more when the soil or mulch under the tree is eroded. I have trouble keeping the ground under my apples topped up because my chickens love to scratch there. (Maybe this is why I don’t have worms in my apples?)
Fertilizing
I don’t know much about fertilizing apple trees because I’ve never done it. I treat my apples as I treat all of my fruit trees, and that is with some wood-chip mulch underneath. I periodically replenish the mulch as it breaks down.
I’ve also never seen research on apple trees in Southern California comparing fertilizers, composts, or mulches. But I have seen lots of happy apple trees producing well without fertilizers applied so I’m inclined to think they don’t need to be juiced up unless the soil they’re in is particularly, obviously lean.
Protecting fruit
Birds sometimes peck apples. A net can effectively prevent that, as can mesh bags over individual pieces of fruit.
I have tried tying reflective strips in my apple trees, but that didn’t prevent birds from continuing to peck the fruit.
That said, I have not found birds as attracted to apples as much as they’re attracted to peaches, nectarines, cherries, plums, and grapes.
Pests and diseases
I mentioned not having worms in my apples. This is a frequent pest for some. It’s the worm, or caterpillar, of the codling moth that bores into apples. The larvae of this moth are said to mostly develop in cocoons in the dirt and debris below trees, where they pupate and emerge as moths in late winter / early spring. Obviously, down there they would be easy pickings for a scratching chicken.
What to do if you get wormy apples? You might tolerate some damage and eat around the wormy parts; that’s what I always did as a kid with the Granny Smith apples from my grandparents’ tree. Or read here about methods to reduce codling moth damage.
Fireblight occasionally occurs on apple trees in Southern California, but I have seen it only once on one of my trees in the last decade. It doesn’t seem to be an issue worth fretting over.
No, apples are not as at home in Southern California as they are in Washington or Oregon.
But yes, you should still grow them.
Apples have been grown in Southern California for more than a century. My own great-great grandfather grew apples in the Burbank area. There were apple orchards in Orange County before there were freeways. And of course, there have long been apple orchards up in the San Bernardino Mountains and the Julian area. It’s not a new, experimental crop for this region even though it’s less common in a yard here than a lemon.
So when and where to get started or add more varieties?
When and where to buy apple trees
The best time to buy and plant apple trees is winter, but you should plan in fall.
You can buy from your local nursery when bare-root trees arrive, usually around Christmas. These trees often come from Dave Wilson Nursery, in the Central Valley. Ask your local nursery for the apple varieties they will be getting this winter so you can reserve yours now.
Another good option is to buy from Trees of Antiquity in Paso Robles.
If you’d like to find apple scionwood for grafting, try Fruitwood Nursery up in Humboldt County. Also, keep an eye out for the scionwood exchanges of local chapters of the California Rare Fruit Growers (here is a post about last year’s).
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