Re: Growing appples in a Mediterranean Climate

Gunnar,
I'm not a fruit expert, but since no one else has responded to you:
Whether fruit will be produced depends on two things - whether there is another tree nearby (usually) to pollinate the flowers on yours; and whether the variety you have selected for grafting gets enough "chill" in the winter.  Most temparate fruits (such as apples  which originated in the mountains of Kazakstan, and pears) come from a climate where the winters are quite cold (probably much colder than where you are in Greece).  To set lots of flowers, the standard varieties need lots of chilling hours in the winter (probably can be looked up somehwere for each variety).  However, breeders have created varieties of most temperate zone fruits that require less winter chill.  If your grafted branches produce lots of flowers, then you have varieties that are getting enough winter chilling.
(You could try what we in the states call an "asian" pear, which grows in a warmer climate; however, they normally need to be grafted on to another "asian" pear tree, which you probably do not have.) I don't know how far bees fly from one tree to another, but if you don't have another tree within bee range, you probably won't get much fruit, even with lots of flowers, unless you graft on a different variety to your tree.  You can have a number of different varietes of the same fruit on a tree - each on its own branch.
I would imagine there must be other apple trees in Greece - or why would the Greeks have the story of the Judgment of Paris - Aphrodite, Hera, and Athene?  Perhaps it wasn't an apple after all, or since Troy was in Turkey, maybe the apple came from the Turkish mountans.  Even if it wasn't an apple, the Greeks were familiar with it, or it would not have been in the story.
As to health of the tree - they like to be fertilized, occasionally deep watered, and not overwatered.  In the states many growers spray such trees several times during the dormant season with a mixture of lime-sulphur and oil, to kill over-wintering diseases.

Richard Starkeson

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Gunnar Dath,  Aetos wrote:

Do you know if these graftings will grow on to produce fruit? I see a lot of old trees with
>graftings looking pretty sad, is there anything one can do? Feeding? Watering?
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