Plan Your Home Orchard Around The Weather

The weather episode taking place outside my window right now (preliminaries to a rare winter snowstorm headed here in USDA Plant Zone 9 by this evening) illustrates the importance of growing fruit that’s proven to do well in your specific location.

We’ve had freezing weather for the better part of 48 hours now, which is an extremely rare occurrence here. Ironically, a nearly identical 10-year weather event occurred last January, too, which goes to show that, whatever the odds, it’s always *possible* to draw a straight in back-to-back poker hands. Known as “hard freezes” these weather events will make it very clear to the experimental gardener whether he or she is growing hardy fruit trees and plants, or whether they are temporary residents better suited for the subtropics.

I think it’s fine to experiment in the garden or orchard, and I do it all the time. But I plant Raja Puri and other bananas around here in the knowledge that, about half the time, they’ll freeze down to the ground until spring, and I’ll lose whatever fruit they were teasing me with before winter reality hit.

When it comes to fruit on which you are counting for part of your food supply, however, my advice is to be conservative and plant things that won’t be killed in the odd freeze. The trick is, you can’t just plant plum or peach or blackberry varieties that grow well farther up in the north in order to avoid surprise winter damage. You also have to be aware that many fruit plants require a certain number of hours below 45 degrees – chill hours before they will bear fruit.

So if you’re looking for a tree to provide a good harvest in the Deep South, you have to find something that not only can withstand the odd 20-degree cold blast, but also has a low chill requirement – if it’s a stone fruit such as a peach, or if it’s a blackberry variety. To find out what does best in your state, check web sites at major state universiy ag schools, such as Clemson’s in South Carolina, for instance.

This is not to say that you can’t try something a little more exotic. I think more southern suburbanites really ought to acquaint themselves with the fig, and the Japanese persimmon, for instance. Many fig varieties can handle more cold than they get in Zone 9, but they love our heat, and will with very little care produce plentiful harvests of absolutely delicious fruit for fresh eating, cooking or drying. Fuyu and Hachiya are only two of numerous excellent persimmon varieties that grow extremely well in the South. Our Hachiya, even stunted as it is within the shade of a towering pecan, produces more fruit than four of us can eat, from October into December.

My other fruit experiments include three feijoa bushes out front, and three new jujube trees out back. The feijoa (pictured above) produces egg-sized green fruit said to taste like the combination of guava and pineapple. Although it hails from South America, I don’t worry that it will succumb to our bad winter, because it’s native to the Andes foothills where the mercury can drop to 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Likewise, my jujube varieties (producers of fruit about the size and shape of a small European plum) can handle cold much more intense than the worst day in Zone 9.

The point is, you can try exotic subtropical fruit and expect success even up here in the southern United States. But first, you need to know in which USDA hardiness zone you reside. Then, you need to know what fruiting plants generally will thrive in your zone, and which varieties will do better where you live than others.

You also have to decide how much trouble it’s worth to try to coax something along in your zone when it obviously is not happy. For instance, a lot of people try to grow mangos in the Houston area, and some say they are quite successful. But mango varieties with which I’m familiar can’t handle weather below 32 degrees for any length of time. So you can put your mango in a big container and move it in and out of doors. Or you can build elaborate frame cages and methodically cover the tree, heating the inside during freezes. But for me, that becomes too much work when so many other fruit trees can handle our weather with little trouble.

The only fruit tree we have that I’ve covered during this present freeze is our meyer lemon. I believe it would survive the freeze unaided, but some branch tips would probably be damaged. So I threw a light blanked and a tarp over the top and secured it with twine. Our satsuma orange, next to it, can handle the cold with no covering at all. But when you check with reliable tree nurseries, you’ll find that limes, most lemons, most grapefruits and many orange varieties are more cold sensitive than the meyer lemon. You can usually grow them in Houston – for about 10 years until we have a major hard freeze.

Unfortunately for everyone who set out the wrong type of citrus or other sensitive subtropical fruit last spring, after figuring we wouldn’t have another bad freeze for a decade, we just did.

Which is OK if you’re just experimenting. But don’t gamble with your food supply.

If you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of southern suburbanites out there, with room for only a couple of fruit trees, decide which fruit and which variety would be best by first consulting with the experts. If you have an Internet connection, it’s pretty easy. Start with the best university agriculture school in your state – or from another state with similar growing requirements. Many – such as Texas A&M University – have a wealth of information on what to grow at your house, and how to get started.