I am trying Orangered and Tomcot (with grafts of Hoyt Montrose) apricots. My Tomcot is almost in bloom due to the warm February, Orangered seems to be a few days behind. My changes of any surviving blooms are low just based on the calendar, unless we have a March like 2012 (but that super hot, dry summer wasn’t worth a warm March to me).
Are any of the Jersey apricots (Jerseycot etc) worthwhile in Maryland? You’d think they would be but I don’t see them recommended by @scottfsmith or others.
Big questions is have you seen any pollinators?
Flies, Honey bee, box elder beetles, bumble bee
I have Orangered and Tomcot trees also. Both mine are close to bloom also. When I planted them, I told myself I would be happy if I got fruit one out of three years. If the weather doesn’t cooperate, I don’t think I will make an attempt to cover them, but we’ll see. Both trees have ample buds, so it would be ashamed to get nothing. This threat of a cold blast between now and April sits in my stomach and gives me nightmares.
My Tomcot set a few last year, but they randomly aborted about halfway to maturity, I went out one day in mid May, and they had just dropped. Not even any visible insect damage.
In my experience, Tomcot has an edge due to its longer blooming time. Its flower buds do not open at the same time. This has help some of my Tomcot flowers survived a cold blast.
The blast wiped out all that were blooming or about to bloom. Later buds were more dormant, survived and bloomed later.
Granted the blast only lasted a day. If it lasts several days, your chance will be very slim.
My Tomcot buds are most advanced on the spurs. Less so on last year’s growth.
My Tomcot is in full bloom, and has been since last Friday. I’m hoping for fruit set soon.
I got some set last year, but didn’t take the circulio seriously enough.
Have you looked into trying KDL spray for late frosts? February bloom seems like it would have a lot of potential frosts to survive, but could be worth looking at. I will be trying KDL for the first time this year on my apricots.
I would be going insane if my buds were that far along.
Yup, I hate looking at them even though they’re pretty. And as you can see from my picture, that tree is in the shade for most of the midday hours until the sun gets higher in the Spring.
While I hate the idea of loosing the fruit, I will say I’d be happy to get some more cold weather so it doesn’t seem like things are so far out of wack. Right now it is 77 degrees outside and still headed up… my dog is not happy.
Cold wont help now. The energy to flower is in the buds their selves. If the roots dont wait up and send energy to the branches the buds can still fail.
I’d love to try KDL, I find a bunch of articles about how great it is but I can actually find it for sale.
I had to buy it directly from Agro-K. There are some ag stores around here that supposedly carry it but I couldn’t get them on the phone.
I don’t even see an option to buy it on their website.
Yeah it was a whole thing. I called, then they had me send a message through the website “contact us” part or whatever it’s called. Then they had me call back and took an order over the phone. It’s probably not what they want to do selling to individuals, but they were nice about it. I can’t find the receipt but I think it was like $40-60 with shipping for 2.5 gallons.
