Q. My wife and I recently purchased a home in Las Vegas. It is on a little less than an acre and has access to well water. Currently on the property, it is mostly just dirt with a few pine trees. We want to plant an orchard with a lot of different fruit trees that will grow well, and we have seen a few of your articles in the RJ. In one of them, you suggested the questioner to email you for a list of recommended fruit trees for Las Vegas and we are hoping you could email that to us as well.
A. First of all, I would not plant anything during this heat unless it is very early in the morning when its cooler. Even then its a problem at this time of year. This includes any of the fruit trees.
Plant what you will eat. If like to eat peaches, then plant peaches. If you like apricots, then plant apricots. If you like to eat plums, then plant plums. Too many people plant Myers lemon (a citrus). What can you do when 200 pounds of “lemons” are ready during the three or four weeks of January or February? Your neighbors will see you coming with a bowl of lemons in February and not answer the door!
We live where our winter weather can get cold at times (freezing), and warm at times (not freezing). There are fruit trees that survive the cold weather by dropping their leaves (we call these temperate fruit trees). Then there are subtropical fruit trees such as all the citruses. They prefer the non-winter temps but survive winter weather. The average killing temperature during the winter of temperate fruit trees is about 15F. The average killing winter temperature of subtropical citrus is about 28F. Some temperate tree crops tolerate our winter cold temperatures better than others (apples, pears, for instance) and some do (pomegranate, figs, for instance).
Citrus production is in Yuma Arizona, Riverside California, Galveston, Tx, and the southern half of Florida. In our climate, (in my opinion) growing citrus is “experimental”. The risk of losing citrus is high because of our winter temperatures.
Temperate fruit trees are affected by the heat of summer. That is their “winter”. For this reason, I did not evaluate any subtropical “citrus” in this report.