:-)

Hi Tampopo. I fondly remember the movie.

We have some success with apricots here in western Montana, without the mediating influence of the lake your parents have. Apricots appear to be more cold-hardy than peaches, and there are a few people here who manage to get a few peaches from a few trees every few years.

Our apricots are subject to problems with early-bloom/late frost syndrome. This year nobody anywhere got any. But most years there's at least a few trees that bear, and often many trees bear.

I think the tree that convinced me that an apricot can be great eaten out of hand is a "Mormon", aka "Chinese". When ours bears we love to eat them fresh. My first preference for 'cots is to make preserves.

We also have a "Tilton" but haven't had a chance to sample a crop from it yet.

Good luck,

Mark

Never plant apricots anywhere you don't already see them growing and producing: let someone else take the risk first. Apricots are the most difficult stone fruit there is. Any slight stress (a 10mph wind @ 40Degrees for instance) after blossom will cause a complete crop loss. Try sweet cherries instead. They ripen at about the same time as apricots and will produce most places that peaches do.

Sandy, that sounds a bit extreme to me - 10MPH winds at 40F should not do anything. Sweet cherries are not better in all ways, cherries are less tolerant of heat than apricots and the trees are more prone to canker.

Tampopo, based on other experiences I have heard in the midwest I would say you will get fruit some years and not others, anywhere from every other year to every fourth year. Thats a lot better than no fruit at all, but on the other hand if room is limited it may not be the best use of the space.

Good varieties for frost tolerance include Chinese/Mormon/Sweet Pit (or combinations of those names, e.g. Chinese Sweet Pit - this variety has many names), plus Puget Gold, Tomcot, and Harglow. I would not plant a variety that does not have a reputation for frost-tolerance.

Scott

Tampopo:

I tend to agree with your folks, in that I like apricots and have been growing them in Northern Virginia for nearly 30 years. You may have had some bad experiences with apricots that had been off the tree too long, but most homegrown apricots are quite delicious in a good year. The trick is to select a variety appropriate to your climate, on a rootstock that is suited to your soil conditions. Apricots have the curious ability to improve in flavor and acidity when preserved or cooked, and frozen apricots are our favorite frozen fruits. They also make first-class pies -- in my opinion the very best.

Apricot trees are extremely hardy, easily able to withstand the climate conditions you describe. Their buds are also reliably hardy. The single most troublesome habit of apricot trees is to begin bloom very early -- at least as early as Japanese plums and fully 10 days before peaches. In my climate bloom usually begins by mid-March, and often continues well into the first week of April. If, after the bulk of the blooms have opened or even set little apricots, you have a cold, still night with temperatures at or below 28 degrees F, you can lose all the blooms or small fruits. That is why you can have a wonderful crop some years, and lose it all the following season. The location of your parents backyard near a large body of water may actually be an advantage if it helps moderate temperatures and provide some wind and air movement on the last few cold nights of the season. I tend to disagree with Sandy that windy conditions at 40 degrees can damage apricots. On the contrary, it is night winds that can help to save an apricot crop, and still wind conditions that really finish them off.

Nearly all apricot varieties are self-pollinating, although all can benefit from a companion tree to some extent. However, I would not worry about pollination in planting a singleton tree. But variety selection is important for success, as is the choice of rootstock. I have planted at least 10 different apricot varieties, beginning in the mid-70's, and began by planting the large, California-type apricots such as Tilton, Wilson Delicious and Hungarian Rose. All of these suffered from the same problem in my humid summer climate; as they began to ripen they would begin to crack open and were ruined within 24 hours. I ended up taking all those trees out.

Then, in the mid-80's I discovered the Tomcot variety, an introduction from Washington State Univ., which was being sold by Mellinger's Nursery of N. Lima Ohio as their only apricot variety. Sadly, Mellinger's is now out of business, but I think their choice of variety was the correct one, since I have had more success with Tomcot than any of the others. Tomcot is also subject to late freezes, but if you can get the fruits through this period, your chances of picking ripe apricots are greatly improved. Tomcot fruits are not really small, but they are smaller than the California types and do not crack. They also ripen very early compared with many others, and I have often picked nearly all of them by June 30. This gets them down and off the tree before the really hot, humid days of July and August, and helps protect them against brown rots and insect activity of midsummer. We feel that their flavor and quality are excellent.

Apricots can be grafted to several different rootstock types, which can affect their ability to withstand extreme cold, or their ability to adapt to wet clay soils. Rootstock type can also have a profound influence on the vigor of the grafted cultivar above. If your parents soil tends to stay wet, you would want a plum rootstock such as Myrobalan or St. Julian "A", which are more tolerant of wet soils than seedling apricot rootstocks such as Chinese. Plum rootstocks will also produce a slower-growing tree with a smaller final size, which I consider an advantage. The trees I have on apricot seedling roostock require extensive pruning every season to keep them down where I can thin and spray the fruits. On the other hand, a Puget Gold apricot I have on St. Julian "A" has remained small and compact after over 10 years, and needs little to no pruning.

While I have had pretty good success with Tomcot, I do not mean to suggest that is the only variety you might consider on the N. Ohio coast. Agriculture Canada has had an apricot breeding program for many years, producing dozens of varieties that may be adaptable to your area. Many of these were developed at the Harrow, Ont. experiment station, and their names all begin with "HAR", i.e. Harogem, Harlayne, etc. I think if I were you I would shop around at nurseries online, using the old search engine, to see what is available and investigate which of those are on a plum rootstock that appears appropriate to your conditions. Then, after you have identified a half-dozen or so varieties on the appropriate rootstocks that seem to fit the need for long bloom period, early ripening, etc., come back here to Gardenweb and ask for additional comments before making your final selection. If you are only going to plant one tree, and it is important to you and your folks, you might as well try to get the widest possible advice before making your final decision.

Finally, in most Eastern and Midwest locations, little developing apricots are subject to damage from an insect known as the plum curculio, which can ruin a developing fruit before it really gets started. Spraying several times at one week to ten day intervals with an insecticide such as Permethrin may be required if this insect is a problem in your location. The PC likes to attack very young fruits with tender skins, but after the fruits are half-grown and the skins a little tougher, it tends to ease off and you can stop spraying. During some chilly, wet springs, apricots can also develop mildews on the skin, which causes the skins to harden up and stops growth. Mildew can be controlled by adding a fungicide such as Captan, mixed with your insecticide. I spray the apricots several times in the spring; you may not have to if you don't have these problems. But if you do, your spray activity is concentrated during the early development of the fruit, and pesticide residues should be of negligible concern.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Rule number one of home food production: pick your battles. Crops every other year? Every fourth Year? Success depends on observing certain tricks? Reliability and productiveness should be the top criteria for choosing what to plant. There are trees that are tough as nails and almost never fail (persimmons, mulberries), and there are trees that you will be swimming against the current from the get go (apricots, for instance). We all make our choices.

Yes, 10 mph winds, 40 degrees F., zone 7, Harcots. Not to mention one night at 30 degrees, no wind, another year.

The apricot varieties that are available to me from a local nursery are 'Flavor Delight' aprium' & Chinese dwarf apricot (maybe Mormon), my zone is 7b, I think, I live about a mile south of Mt.Vernon, VA. The area I'm thinking about planting them is along a 17' fence, w/ a S/E exposure, somewhat protected by the house. Does this sound like it might work?

Thistle: Flavor Delight blooms very early, earlier than most apricots. Plus, I've grown it in CA and TX and find the quality lacking. It is very productive. The variety mentioned above, Tomcot, would be a much better choice in my opinion. You can easily find in mail order. If you have to chose one of the two you mentioned, go Chinese. Harcot is another variety I would consider.

The Fruitnut

Apricot leaves and the whole tree is so attractive to me, that I would grow them just for that reason. The fact that I only manage a huge crop every 3-4 years is a bonus...better than any lottery ticket! Though I share pecks and someimes bushels with friends, I fill the freezer til I'm exhausted. I only wash, cut in half, deseed and mix maple syrup or brown sugar with the fruit-squeeze out the air and freeze in pie/cobbler or 2 cup pkts. As was mentioned , the flavor increases with freezing. Way better than any we east of the MS get from CA. Have never had any pests.
Am awaiting my first crop of Chinese sweet pit/Mormon. How does anyone describe the flavor?
cella jane

Thistle:

If you look around the net for additional apricot varieties before making your final choice, you may be glad you did. In the internet age, there is no reason to limit your choices those those sold at local nurseries. Planting your orchard is too important to leave those decisions to the luck of whatever is available locally.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

I love my Harcot apricot. Really showed some resistance to canker and blossom rot. It has produced fruits for me in the wettest (most number of rainy days) bloom period ever. The fruits are the most delicious of the apricots I have tasted, it is like a hybrid between a yellow nectarine and a peach. It was developed at Harrow Experiment Station in Ontario, Canada. One thing nice is that it is cold hardy and also bore three flushes of blooms for me, and are spaced between 1 to 2 weeks apart. Some flowers will succumb to late frosts, but at least one major flush usually escapes it, just my observations that needed confirmation in our area.

It currently has 18 different kinds of apricots, a peach plum, peach cot, almonds, plum cots, peaches, nectarines, asian plums, european plums, cherry plums grafted to it, and all growing with most blooming now, but I made sure half the canopy is still Harcot, it is just so good. Please note that the plums are not directly grafted, I have to use plumcots as interstems. Hopefully, next season if another interstem will take, I would have some sweet cherries grafted on it.

I agree that the leaves and the tree structure is so good. The branches are spreading well enough so that whatever you graft unto it will usually not shade each other out. The Harcot being more disease resistant than the Blenheims or Canadian White Blenheim, is very ideal for multi-grafts. I would compare it to my Lisbon lemon tree in the way it spreads its major branches. I have grafted more than 50 cultivars to my Lisbon and I think I will be able to graft much more cultivars on the Harcot.

Has anyone out there grown or tried Royal Rosa? I read somewhere that it is brownrot resistant, and Sunset gave it an "outstanding" rating for flavor. I was only able to find it at a nursery 50 miles away, so I drove there on a weekend and bought one. I planted it next to an aprium. It's now a full-sized tree, but I haven't harvested a single fruit from it yet. The tree is full of blooms. I'm full of anticipation. Will my hopes prove to be justified?

Nimzo

Nimzo

The Royal Rosa and Goldkist Apricot, they bloom together with Flavorella plumcot. The Royal Rosa has been specifically mentioned by Bay Laurel Nursery as a pollinator of my elusive Flavorella. This year the Goldkist bloomed exactly together with Flavorella and am hoping to get some crop of either one. My credible friends in the South are able to get Flavorella fruits by planting Goldkist apricots nearby.

My nearby friend's Royal Rosa was bought as a multi-grafted apricot tree from our local nursery and it carries the DWN tag. The Royal Rosa branch has always produced for him, even last year when we got weeks of continuous rains. The other apricots that came with it did not produce any fruit last year but have been producing the year after it was planted. The Royal Rosa is also a very early harvesting Apricot, sometimes first week of June, they can be ready, like 2 years ago when the April to May was hotter than usual in our area.

I bought a bunch of trees this year from Siloam orchards. I decided to try the two apricot varieties they have available. They are purported to be much hardier than some of the more common apricots to the south. I have no idea if that means problems with late frosts will be better, but it sounded like it was worth taking a chance in my zone, which has much colder winters than norther Ohio.

They can only ship to Canada, but maybe there are nursuries in the US that have hardier apricots?

Chris

Here is a link that might be useful: siloam orchards apricots

I'm very new at this -- I inherited a couple of apricot trees that appear to be about 10 years old last year. They had been nearly a year, and almost a full summer, in the desert heat without significant water before I gained access to them.

There were other fruit trees on the property -- apples, peaches, nectarines, plums, and pears, and all were seriously attacked by borers. Two of the apple trees died. Of all the survivors, however, the apricots did the best, not only surviving but thriving, and producing a bumper crop of delicious fruit. They showed very little borer damage at all.

I don't know anything about what variety they are or their rootstock, but I'm definitely sold on their hardiness. They are already starting to bloom again -- I hope it isn't too early, but I know the trees themselves will be beautiful and healthy for a while yet.

Well, I decided to heed the warning of shopping around before settling on what's available at my local nursery. One of the closest m.o. nurseries to me is Adams County, & I'm thinking about getting Harcot, Harlayne, & Flavor Grenade Pluot. I think these will be pretty high maintenance trees. I think the reason I want to try apricots is that I love dried apricots-is there an easier way to replicate this flavor?

I've also ordered some jujubes from Roger Meyer & pawpaws from Neal Peterson (these are coming next spring) & the only other fruit trees I'm thinking about trying to fit in are persimmons & Russian quinces-they do have Nikita's gift, Saijo, Jiro, & maybe a couple of other varieties available locally (for persimmons), the only source I've seen for quinces is OGW.

I have several blueberry bushes, but only the birds have enjoyed them.I have 6 fig trees & several marginal plants for this area-windmill palm, musa basjoo, deodar cedars.
What's the best way to learn about growing fruit in this area (other than buying lots of plants & watching them die)?

A lot of places have quinces. Raintree and Edible Landscaping certainly do.