No, they never go dormant and if left alone will have spindly, 12 foot tall branches. They develop an extremely vertical habit that is unproductive.
We counter this by aggressively bending branches horizontal and pinching back vertical suckers in order to form fruiting buds. At the start of the dry season we strip all the leaves manually, which causes the tree to think that it has gone through a winter. Since it is 80 degrees and 12 hours of daylight length, it then thinks that it is spring and time to blossom and bear fruit; this usually occurs 6-8 weeks after leaf stripping. We call this Tropic Apple Culture, and various varieties respond differently to it, not always depending on their chilling hour rating. I surmise that by manually leaf stripping, the tree believes that the chilling hour requirement, whatever it may be, has been satisfied; it then goes on to blossom and fruit. Mollie's Delicious was one of the first to fruit for us, even before Anna. Anna and Dorsett Golden fruit heavily the third year, following in ensuing years by other varieties since we plant on either seedling or M111 rootstock. Many institutions still consider growing apples in the tropics "experimental"; our farmers are way past that and sinking big money into expanding their current apple orchards, usually with the crop completely sold while it is still on the trees. Kevin Hauser Kuffel Creek Apple Nursery Uganda Ltd. Riverside, California Nakifuma, Uganda On Fri, 20 Jul 2018 22:19:42 -0500, Doug Nelson <doug.nel...@nelsonmultimedia.com> wrote: > I believe there are some on this list very near the equator. What happens > with apple trees near the equator? Do they go dormat even though you do not > have a fall season? > > Doug Nelson > Woodys Apple Farm > Plano illnois _______________________________________________ apple-crop mailing list apple-crop@virtualorchard.com http://virtualorchard.net/mailman/listinfo/apple-crop
