Kevin, we can trade scions in winter.
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Fabulous! And thank you!
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Your Sugar Pearl sounded delish. Need to look for scionwood.
My one and only Florilege fell today, 07/21/21. It was good but at this point, I prefer sweeter and juicier Orangered. It is not fair judge Florilege by one fruit and the condition we had here this month. We have had record breaking rain which probably affected its taste.
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I would love to help, but if my information is correct the patent date on Sugar Pearl’s is 2006, leaving 5 more years before it expires.
It’s been a good tree for me. Sets very heavily and is quite disease resistant. Flavor and sweetness are great.
I could have sworn Bob Purvis had it a couple of years ago.
Hmmm. You might be right about that. I can double check my dates…
He definitely has it on his list now.
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So hear is what I can find: Gurney’s lists the plant patent number PP18639 which I can look up as variety NJA150 with a patent filed: Jul 6, 2006 and issued Mar 25, 2008. I can’t really tell if the description matches what I have.
Has anyone come to some sort of conclusion as to which “juicy” apricot is their preferred choice? I know Orangered, Early Blush and NJ-21-107 were mentioned early in this discussion. I can personally attest that Early Blush is out of this world good. I’m curious if there is another that’s potentially worth my time.
I do not have enough experience to say if it is “juicy” or not, but Ilona was a very good apricot for me last year. It is another product of the Rutgers breeding program.
On the topic of Ilona, I have a few small fruitlets this year… and I do not have a pollinator apricot for it this year. I will monitor them to see if they abort or make fruit. Are any apricots partly self-pollinating?
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All the cots I have grown are plenty juicy on my site besides Tomcot, which is a tad dry so far- big and beautiful, though. On another site I remember some dryish Hargrands, but it depends on the site and/or season.
I want to definitely avoid something like Tomcot. That Apricot is exactly what I mean by the “dryness” I’m referring to. That one performs well here, but I have to say that the fresh eating experience is much higher on Early Blush.
Here, EB can be pretty good but it tends to ripen before there’s been much warm weather and it is the first to lose its crop from a late frost. It is, by far, my least productive cot. But when it comes its early fruit is very welcome. Tomcot is nicely reliable and I like it a lot even if it is a bit dry. The problem is, I don’t have a orangered against my two walls. The one that is most productive for me and produces fine cots is Alfred- sweet, juicy, rich and small. It is the most loaded tree again this year and by far- EB doesn’t have a single cot. It was wiped out by 19 degrees a few weeks ago. I have Tomcot and White Sugar (I think its called- it’s a Rutger’s white fleshed apricot of very pleasing texture and high sugar) also against my southwest and southeast wall.
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WOW. I know this is an old pic/thread. Where did you get the orangered and robada trees? Those 2 are on my list for next year!
Bob Purvis sells wood for those two cots.
Re: Tomcot’s dryness I have to say I view that as a feature, not a bug. It has a very intense flavor that is something like a cross of a fresh and a dried cot. Yum!! BTW Rovada is also on the dry side, not sure that was mentioned in the 354 posts above…
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At the time, I did not have an apricot tree. I grafted several apricots on my peach tree. Then, I removed that tree so I lost most of those apricot varieties.
I just put an apricot tree in ground last year. It is a Tomcot but I graft Orangered to it. I like OR.
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Nope, they eventually dropped.
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I have read many times that apricots are self fruitful. Maybe, it is true in warmer zones but not in my experience. If I don’t hand pollinate them, I don’t get fruit set. They also bloom so early, it is often too cold for pollinators to come out to work.
It is also possible that some “self fruitful” varieties are more self fruitful than others. So far, I am not sure which one can be real self fruitful for me.
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Just to help keep track, my TomCot set about 40 fruit last year and was the only apricot I had, so must have been self fruitful.
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