Ideal Climate for Almond

Q. What is the ideal climate for almond tree. How can we give cooling to an almond planted outside. It is because if I take the almond plant  to India Kerala.

Thank you for your time and effort.

A. The tree will cool itself if it had water applied to the soil regularly. At air temperatures of 45C, plants will cool themselves to about 35C if the soil is kept moist.

Almond originates from Central Asia where temperatures can reach 40+C at daytime extremes. We have had almonds growing successfully at 48 to 50C in the Mojave Desert. I don’t think you will have a problem with summer temperatures.

The cooling you might need is for winter chilling hours because I think in Kerala you may not have enough winter chilling hours. Select an almond with the lowest winter chilling requirement. Almonds have a chilling requirement of around 300 to 500 hours of temperatures below 7C. Read more about chilling requirement below.

http://www.davewilson.com/product-information-general/special-topics/fruit-tree-chilling-requirement

It is worth trying and let me know how it does for you.