🍎 Apple

Malus domestica
The tree that invented autumn, pies, and your toddler's juice box.
Sun
Full sun, 6–8 hrs
Days to harvest
3–5 years to first meaningful fruit
Spacing
15–20 ft for standard trees, 10 ft for dwarfs
Soil pH
6.0–7.0

How to grow

Buy trees grafted onto dwarf or semi-dwarf rootstock unless you want a 30-foot commitment. Plant in late winter while dormant, with the graft union a couple inches above the soil line. Most varieties need a pollination partner, so check chill-hour compatibility before you buy — in Florida, only low-chill types like Anna or Dorsett Golden stand a chance.

Water & feeding

Deep watering weekly during establishment; mature trees handle drought better than your lawn does. Mulch the root zone but keep it off the trunk — volcano mulching is a crime.

Common problems

  • Fire blight (blackened, scorched-looking branch tips — prune well below the damage, disinfecting tools between cuts)
  • Apple scab and cedar-apple rust (fungal leaf and fruit spots; choose resistant varieties)
  • Codling moth worms in the fruit (bag individual apples or release Trichogramma wasps)
  • Deer, which consider your young tree an all-you-can-eat salad bar

Harvest

Pick when the fruit colors up and a gentle twist separates it from the branch. Taste one — starchy means wait, crisp and sweet means go. Fall planting of bare-root stock is for northern zones; Florida gardeners plant in late winter.

Nerdy fact: Apple trees need chill hours — winter cold that flips an internal switch telling them to bloom. Florida's low-chill varieties like Anna need only a few hundred hours, which is why your neighbor's 'tropical' apple actually works while a Honeycrisp up north would laugh at our winters.

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