Where abouts are you located in GA Randy? @scottfsmith any idea where one can locate Hoyt Montrose zion wood?
Mick, Just a few miles north of the I-85 corridor and a few miles west of the South Carolina state line. Actually between Athens and Clemson. Randy/GA
I got my Hoyt Montrose from Bob Purvis, but many people around here including myself might trade for it.
@randy_ga I don’t know anything about Pixiecot. The main thing you need for apricots in the south are resistance to cracking and diseases. By the time they are ripening its already getting really hot and humid. Plus frost resistance depending on your location.
Scott,
Can you tell me the difference between Montrose and Hoyt Montrose?
I’ve only head second-hand things about HM being larger and tastier. There seem to be no advantages of Montrose over HM that I have heard so I would just get HM.
Thanks,
I grafted a beautiful multi grafted apricot and accidently killed it by over watering and it got root rot. That is the first time that has ever happened to me. The hole was in dense clay and it apparently held water too good. I’ll make another one this winter. At a future date I will start a thread on recommendations for a multi graft apricot. I think H Montrose will be one of them.
Any Update on the Georgia Apricots. Going to try some pluot, aprium, apricot varieties here in North Florida. Put in a Flavor Delight Aprium this year. Tree is probably in its third year now and when transplated was small and tiny and looked pretty delicate. But I will say that its growing very well. I think it is happy to be freed from its pot. I’ve sprayed with the same stuff I’ve put on my other stone fruits (daconil, captan, and F-stop) and have to say it is doing well. No signs of disease, even the june bugs havent bothered it much. I believe I saw one bloom while it was still rooting in. So we will see in a year or two.
Lurking there cause I’m probably going to put in a Katy next year but I’d prefer to put in a royal beinhem.
Later all
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Godspeed! I’m in upstate SC and apricots are “impossible” here too but I have 4 trees that I grew from seed, all of which flowered profusely for the first time this year. We had the worst possible weather for them: torrential rainfall all winter then very warm March encouraging blooming, then hard frost, then two very warm April weeks, then two hard frosts a week after our “last frost date.” There are no fruits on any of the trees but the frost didn’t seem to hurt many of the flowers.
I have a multi graft apricot: Zard, Afghanistan, Orange-Red, Montros, Moorepark, and Wilson Delicious. It is in its second leaf and doing well. If you are going to do a multigraft I would not recommend Wilson Delicious. It is rapidly out growing the others and will always be a pruning challenge. This tree is replacing a 30 year old Moorepark that died. It did extremely in middle TN. Rarely did I loose a crop. I had it in a great location, NE of my house so it got evening shade in the late winter and early spring thus delaying the bloom.
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hi how can i get fresh apricots fruit in georgia for research purposes
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What is the latest update on growing apricots (and plumcots or apriums) in Georgia (or elsewhere with low-chill winters, e.g. Zone 8b-9a)? Any success and encouragement?
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@Johnsgard
My idea of low chill is less than 200 chill hours. The Apricots I’ve attempted will grudgingly produce 8-12 fruits per year. I’ve had much more success with Zaiger Apriums and Pluots.
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I get about 300-500 chill hours here (SE Texas north of Houston), with about 600 in “cold” winters. I agree 150-200 is generally considered low-chill, but I can’t even begin to consider a 1000-hour+ fruit tree. I planted Spring Satin pluot last year and it rewarded me with a couple of tasty fruits, so was hoping for some encouragement regarding apricots in my area (supposedly USDA Zone 9B per the 2023 revision, but we hit a low 17 F a couple weeks ago, and dropped to 9 F in Feb. 2021).
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Millennial Gardener on Youtube has found success preventing early bud break on his fig trees in NC by using shade cloth in the early spring. It seems getting less sun and keeping them cooler prevents them from breaking dormancy early, so they can stay better protected from late frosts. Worth a try if you have some and note an uptick in spring temps on the weather forecast before your predicted last frost date.
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So just an update. My Flavor Delight Aprium just had a bunch of blooms open this year. However I lost about a quarter of them trying to hand pollinate them. Very very fragile. It did rain this morning and most of them opened today. So I’m not going to touch them anymore. The tree itself is now about 5 years old. Maybe 4. But it looks great. A nice upside down umbrella canopy. It didn’t grow much at all last year. None of my trees did. I think it was a lack of rain and thrips at the beginning of the season. That said it is blooming on the highest branches. Perhaps those got a bit more chill. This year we got about 430 chill hours. I’m just north of Gainesville, FL.
Nearby I also planted a Flavor Grenade and Flavor King pluots. Those trees are probably three years old now. Not much growth in year three. But they got established in my soil which is good. The interesting thing is that both of them are blooming really well and appear to have overlapped pretty closely. I have at least two pluots on the Flavorgrenade which started blooming first. I think it might have self pollinated or perhaps one of the bees brought something that worked. I have tons of bees. My neighbor has six boxes of them. Waiting to see if more pollinate. The blooms on those are not falling off with hand pollination like the Aprium. The FlavorKing looks perhaps to end up with the most blooms though the start of blooming lagged the Grenade by about a week. But there is overlap between the two pluots. And the FlavorKing is in sync with the FlavorDelight (Aprium). So far I have good news. Now I’ll have to stomp out what is the beginning of another thrips invasion once the blooming is all over. The good news is that the thrips aren’t effecting the flowers like they did last year. Last year they were really bad.
Also a side note for anyone reading this. So far in my backyard orchard I’ve had really good luck with Owari Satsuma (two barely survive the worst freeze ever a year ago) and one looks to start producing again this year. Also I have an Anna Apple planted next to a Elsa Sweet. What is an Elsa Sweet you say? I don’t know. But I bought it from The Greene Genie in Gainesville, FL. Claims it is some kind of natural apple tree found in FL. Either way let me tell you it is prolific. I strongly suspect it is self pollinating. And I have already had to thin the thin several times. And the Bees absolutely devour this tree. It blooms before Anna but overlaps the entire time. It blooms for weeks. Both trees have done really well. The Anna taste a lot like a typical apple perhaps more on the tart side. The Else Sweet if you hold off on picking them till as yellow as can be are often (not always) pretty sweet for an apple. It is tricky knowing when to take them off the tree. I find leave them on as long as possible and you get the best outcomes.
My five year old Royal Crimson Cherry continues to get a few more blossoms every year. It was heavily damaged during transplant. Lost half the trunk due to canker. It isn’t as large as a five year old tree. But this years blooms were the best. Sustained and stayed open for a long time. I don’t think any have pollinated this year. But something that is new is that the bees have suddenly discovered the tree and all the little nector things while before I only ever noticed the ants on them. So lets see if I get a cherry or two. I’m convinced that with a 440 hour winter they will work provided I can get them to grow big enough. They will need a lot more blooms I think to really take off. But the bloom density honestly wasn’t bad. The tree just isn’t that big. So this year my goal is to really pay more attention to the trees than I did last year and baby them a bit more and make sure they get a lot of growth. All the trees need to get larger.
I also have three Asian pear trees. I’ll talk about those when there is something to talk about. They always wake up last. Even the Lapins Cherry wakes up before they do. Those I think have too much shade and they are growing slowly. Till next year!
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How old is your aprium?