What are you ordering, 2018

Depends on the form when it arrives. Sometimes I cut a third back. Sometimes I hack it back knee-high. Sometimes I cut back to wherever a nice set of branches splay out on the trunk (especially if I plan to multi-bud the tree right away).

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Just placed some orders late in the game.

I was successful this winter collecting scions of several apricot varieties I want to try. I’ve decided I need a couple more base trees upon which to graft these.

I ordered Tomcot on Lovell from Raintree. I’m gonna plant this guy in my z7 backyard. Sorry @puggylover75. I know you sent me Tomcot scions this winter, but I decided to get a whole tree of it now. Apricots are tricky in my climate. Studies in Ontario suggest that cots on Manchurian and Lovell rootstocks fare best in zones with fluxuating spring weather, while cots on Myrobalan can sometimes decline for unknown reasons. Marianna’s performance under a z6/7 cot was not studied and is uncertain. Cots on Citation routinely die for me at my z6 mountain property upon instances of late spring freezes it appears (even Tomcot). April is the danger zone for cots here. Lovell can work as an understock for cots- especially if the planting is elevated and gets good drainage- so says the literature. I’ll have to watch out for borers. Should I take the unusual step of burying the graft union for this one?

I also ordered Alfred apricot on Myro in my first-ever order from Schlabach’s of upstate New York. I’ll plant this guy on my z6 mountain property and hope for the best. @alan has had good luck with Alfred and Myro at his z6 property. Immitation is the highest form of flattery.

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Can’t wait to see some blossoms this year!

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Just bought two each of these. This will give me 4 Plum now and 2 Nectarine which I don’t have at all yet.

#28860 - Starking® Delicious™ Plum Standard Supreme
Bare-RootProfessionally Pruned

Stark® Crimson Gold Nectarine Standard Supreme
#28887 - Stark® Crimson Gold Nectarine Standard Supreme

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2 of these 3-gallon 2yr…Dunstan Chesnut trees image

And 2 of these Chestnut Hill Outdoors ‘DEER CANDY’ Persimmon Collection

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Well, my Indiana Berry order came in today, ten rasps and four blackberries. Somehow they got them all in one box.The box was crinkled on top, but the plants appear to be OK.

I got red, yellow, purple and black rasps, they have interestingly different canes on them. I noticed that one of the blackcaps has some small thorns on it (Bristol?). Most of the rest are thornless, though. It looks like they have very good roots on them.

Here is what I ended up getting:
Summer reds: Prelude, Killarney, Nova
Summer blacks: Bristol, Mac Black
Summer purple: Royalty

Fall reds: Caroline, Joan J
Fall yellows: Double Gold, Fall Gold

Also received four thornless blackberries, all UofA varieties- PA Traveler and Freedom, plus Osage and Ouachita. They all have very long nice roots on them as well.

I’m planning on getting these planted next week, as the ground’s still damp, and we’re expecting mid 20s Sat night. I’ve got them stored in a cool dark cellar in a box until then. Very excited about getting them, hope they turn out well.

Next year hopefully we’ll have a bramble berry Bonanza!

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most of my cane fruit come from them. nice that you can buy just 1 to try out 1st. they are a top notch nursery. the black caps are some thorny buggers! i have most of what you ordered. by next summer you be in berry heaven!

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I have a 2 nd. Year crop of Ouchita this year with hundreds of blooms on the secoyear canes. I a be expecting some nice berries this year! Best if luck with yours!

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Thanks. Sounds like you’ll be rolling in berries come July. Do you have any other berry plants? Ouachita is supposed to be one of the better tasting thornless BB’s.

This evening I was out mowing down in the old orchard where my new rasps are going, and noticed that the Anne plant has a small sucker growing about 4-5" away, I hadn’t seen it before today, the mother plant is only about 5" tall, so I was surprised to see new growths. The Eden rasp next to it has two suckers close to it.

Yesterday I was inspecting the Triple Crown row, and saw another new sprout, which is the third one, out of seven planted last month.

I still haven’t decided where my four new blackberries are going, but I think they’ll end up down by the barn somewhere in that good soil. That’s where the TC’s are at now. Looks like all the berry plants will get put in the ground next week.

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Yes I do have some other plants. 1/2 dozen triple Crown I planted late last year. They aren’t doing very good. They are all still alive and a few of them have some good growth on them but I think it’s the soil. I do believe I will have to transplant them and I bought stuff to do a nice trellis for them. I hope it works. I have some strawberries on order too…Gonna try my hand at them… I really like the experimentation side of gardening and fruit growing. I get more time when I retire I am certain I will start Grafting and messing around with new stuff a lot more…

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My Honey Jar jujube from JF&E survived its late-fall planting. It put out its first signs of growth today after suffering through a sub-zero winter on the mountain.

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I have an Alfred from Schlabach’s also, planted spring 2016. It had two blooms this year but one definitely didn’t set, not sure about the other one yet. Seems very healthy, though. I thought the tag said it was on “apricot seedling” rootstock, but I’m not 100% sure. I’ll check tomorrow. I have a Jerseycot behind it that is one year older and seems to have set a lot of fruit this year. Hopefully I get to report on it. My Zard benchgrafts on K1 from last year seem to be growing well, still in root bags. I have one Tomcot and one Zard benchgraft that haven taken initially on prunus americana this spring. I also have what I believe to be a Myro rootstock that has grown out that I tried grafting several apricots onto. One from last year took and has several blooms and the ones I grafted this year seem promising so far. I also have a chinese/mormon apricot in a container that I’ve grafted Zard and Tomcot onto. Both of those have set a few fruit this year, but the grafts are still very small.

I checked my Alfred tag today and it just says it is on “seedling root” which is generic enough to possibly be Myro. I checked the Jerseycot tag and it is on Marianna GF8-1 which I totally forgot about. As far as Marianna 2624 and apricots go, here is one small study that showed 12 of 15 apricot trees surviving 9 years on M2624. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01140671.1994.9513854

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I recently received a snail-mail letter from Schlabach saying they are sold out of trees for the season; no Alfred cots left for me.

So, in a pinch, I decided to order an entire tree of OrangeRed on Myro from Grandpa’s of Michigan. It is due to arrive this week.

My Tomcot on Lovell recently arrived from Raintree. They sent a nice tree. I immediately planted it, and had it multi-budded with 8 additional varieties:

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Hey Matt,
What are your expectations for apricots? Will you be happy with fruit every two year, five years, ever? The orchard by my house has four very old apricot trees and we have only gotten fruit from them one year out of 7. I hope this works for you because I find store bought apricots just don’t cut it.

Good looking trees!

My expectations for the apricots is they will all die.

I hope they prove me wrong. I would be pleasantly surprised.

I continue to chase apricots like a white whale.

It would be very valuable to have the early-ripening ones succeed (Early Blush, Hargrand, etc). It’s very nice to have larger-sized stonefruits during cherry season.

The farmers around here are able to grow small crops of cots successfully about once every four years. But I can’t get them to tell me which cultivars they’re growing (they forget the names and are too busy to bother looking at their notes).

Dried cots are nice. But the rare juicy fresh cots are on a completely different level. They are succulent.

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Have you had a cot on Manchurian R/S? I’ve heard that is a good r/s for survivability but I haven’t had cots long enough to tell.

I have Hargrand on Manchurian (multi-budded with Zard), planted Spring 2017.

I also have Westcot on Manchurian, planted this past winter.

They both leafed out this week. We’ll see if they survive…

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My brother-in-law lives in SoCal. He literally just planted a bareroot apricot several weeks ago. It now has 30 fruitlets hanging from it. Climate is such a huge factor with cots.

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I hope you have includedHarglow, as it is late to bloom, for me anyway. I checked my cots today and quite a few blossoms are falling off. Ugh!

Maybe I’ll try Harglow if Hargrand fails.

Cummins says they both ripen at the same time, so duplicative for me if Hargrand succeeds.

I originally went with Hargrand based on @alan’s recommend. He says it survives z6 better than any other cot worth eating.