"Best" apricot for New England (6b)?

Found one Moniqui and one Zard… I hope those two hang on. I have a few more of other varieties.

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I grafted Zard apricot, Sugar Pearls apricot and Cambridge Gage euro plum onto K1 last spring and all are growing fine this year. The apricots are still in root bags but the Cambridge Gage is in ground and doing really well. This year I grafted a PF24C peach onto K1 and it looks like it took and is leafing out nicely. I got the K1s from Raintree.

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Thanks for your input.

Will you put them all in ground? I am running out of planting spots and am thinking about keeping new trees in pots. Just wonder how K1 will do in pot culture.

I have about 10 bench grafted trees in containers and I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do with them. I’ve been planting trees for about 5 years and hadn’t been very mindful of just how many I have in ground. When I stopped and counted them this year, I have 75 trees :crazy_face:, 18 grapevines, a dozen Carmine jewel cherries and a bunch of gooseberry and currants, plus strawberries, blackberries, and haskaps. I should not plant any more unless I start taking some out. Hopefully I learn real soon what does best for me, then I can start scaling back. I actually wish I had a dozen trees, 4-6 grapes, 4 Carmine Jewels and 6 gooseberries/currants. That would be way more manageable. Of course the problem is you don’t know the best varieties to plant until you’ve tried a bunch. I’ll probably top work a half dozen larger plums this year which should at least give me a break maintenance-wise. For the more marginal trees, I’ll probably prune really hard to get them more manageable and if they don’t make it, it’s not that big of a deal.

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I’ve planted fruit twice as long as you have but only have about half the number of the trees!! I don’t have a lot of space so I have to be careful.

It took me several years before I expand on stone fruit. They give me a lot more headache than pome. After all these years, still have not had an apricot tree. It’s unexplained death does not make it look very attractive.

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They seem to be more sensitive to micronutrient deficiency. Regular Miracle-Gro works. Otherwise, they do relatively well. Figuring out a water scheme to get good fruit is an issue for all potted trees. Irregular soil moisture produces bad fruit and a potted tree’s watering needs can change form day to day, depending on weather conditions. I think I lost some blooms this year due to under-watering. An automated watering system with moisture sensors would be nice.

What kind of soil media do you use?

What about pots? Root pouch or regular plastic pots?

Hard to say, I’ve tried different potting mixes over the years. I now use standard potting mix because that gave the best results in the past with top-down watering in pots.

I have different types of pots. The K1 trees are in 18 gal. rubbermaid roughneck totes with drain holes a few inches above the bottom.

Thanks. I am using Scott’s potting mix with moisture control. Not sure if I should use the regular without moisture control instead.

The biggest problem I had was drying out, especially in August when the sun seems hotter and their is fruit on the tree. In absence of continuous watering from the bottom or automated watering from top, I think moisture control soil is probably better. Light mixes dry out too fast.

For my smaller trees I’ve been using root pouches, but they dry out even faster than plastic pots. I put mulch on top which helps some, but the wind and heat seem to take the water out of the sides pretty fast. However, there may be more moisture in the soil than I think, because even with neglecting them for awhile last summer I didn’t lose any. Some barely grew at all, though. With bigger trees in containers I have problems with wind knocking them over. This should be easy to take care of, but I’m always moving them around and forgetting to secure them.

Lighter mix has dried out on me, too. I used it with figs.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Not counting figs, I started fruit trees in pots this year with two jujubes.

I have peach, nectarine, pluot, apricot and both Japanese/hybrid plum/aprium. No compatibility issues so far.

My Apricot trees are loaded this year. I have two trees that I started from seed. They came from a tree above Delores, Colorado at around 7,000 feet in elevation. My parents collected them in 2006 and sent me the seeds. I planted the trees in 2007 and I have had fruit since 2012. The last two years have not been great for fruit production due to late frost and last year a snow storm in May. This year the tree is loaded with fruit. I hope I get half of what is on them now. One of the trees has Montrose grafted onto it. The Montrose bloomed 3 day’s after the other trees started blooming. I don’t know what variety of apricot my trees are but I do know that the tree it came from was from a seed as well. Is there any way too find out what variety my trees are? I will be doing some tree work on one of them in the fall and will have scion available. The Montrose graft has fruit as well so I hope to be able to compare the fruit. Here in Portland, Maine I know of two other apricot trees that have been here for over 40 years. I am going to get some scion from those trees if possible. There is one Harcot and one Goldcot at my old house in Portland. I never got fruit while I lived there but I do know they produce fruit. I would like to graft more varieties onto my tree. If I get fruit this year I will also have seeds available.

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That’s interesting. Make sure you collect scionwood when the tree is totally dormant, Jan may be best.

@mrsg47 - when do your Tomcot ripen, please?

Due to genetic variations occurring in sexual reproduction each seedling is a variety of its own.

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Mam

I’m not Mrs. G but close enough to you that you can use my harvester date from last year which was on July 11 for Tomcot. The brix levels I recorded ranged from 13 to 17 here.

btw Thanks for asking that question, I just found out that I didn’t record my harvest dates for last year over at Garden Register.

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Thanks, Lance. Glad it is early. My earliest fruit are cherries in early July.

Didn’t know that you are in CT, too. I only know that @BobVance is there.

It wasn’t last year, but a few years ago I got some very good Tomcots (17+ brix). They were ripe right around July 4th, almost identical to the PF1 peach (which was a much less appealing 10-11 brix).

Bob,
Have you tasted other apricots from your trees? Any review of them?