In addition to the Tropic Gold in mentioned above I have a Katy apricot planted this past spring. It had some major trunk weeping but seems to have gotten past that though it didn’t grow any more after that. It has pushed some short spurs but I don’t know if those will pop any blooms.
I’m using the Tropic Gold tree to park wood for other stone fruit varieties.
I’d mention aprium as an alternative, but from everything I’ve read none of the aprium varieties really have a big apricot flavor, regardless of the parentage.
I’m in zone 7a outside Philly. I planted a summer delight aprium in Spring 2021. I got my first fruit this year. It was DELICIOUS. I wrote a little about them here: Summer Delight Aprium - #27 by dpps
I started my orchard 3 years ago in zone 8A (SW AR) & included 5 apricots in the plan knowing I’d never get consistent fruit, but hoping to get some small yield at some point. I’m willing to put in the $ & work for small reward because I love these things and you can’t buy decent ones in any market near here. I have Royal, Blenheim, Gold Kist, & Early Golden varieties, from 1-3 years in the ground. The oldest tree is the Gold Kist, which has a 2.5” dia base and is around 6’ tall, just pruned. It is showing blossom color this year for the first time and will likely get frost bit. That’s the game we play. I’m using the same spray schedule as on my plums, nectarines, & peaches. More as this develops. I am very interested in successes in similar zones. Thanks
@Willyb71
Zone 9a here in south Louisiana. I have, perhaps fool heartedly, two apricot trees and one aprium tree.
The first and oldest is a Tropic Gold apricot. It is in a horrible location and barely gets around 6 hours of sunlight. It’s leggy because of this, and though it will flower sparingly depending on the winter, it has never set a fruit that kept past about olive size.
I have a Katy apricot planted just this past year. It will bloom some this year as I see flower buds swelling. Would be surprised if it sets any fruit, but it’s possible.
My Cot-n-Candy aprium was planted in spring '22. It’s a very healthy tree and even pruned has some branches at 9-10 feet. It will be loaded with blooms this spring as it set a whole lot of fruiting spurs this past year. Hoping I have the problem of thinning fruit on this one.
I will graft another hybrid as well as a White Ume apricot scion I received this spring.
I haven’t sprayed, though I think once it dries out some from last night’s 2.39" rainfall, I will do a copper / dormant oil combined spray.
I am scheduled to spray all my trees (pears, plums, peaches, apples, nectarines, figs, & apricots with dormant oil & copper Wednesday morning, to give them 48 hours above 40F before the next rain. Only one or two are showing bloom color, but bud swell is heavy on some early apples and most of the plums. I’ll probably spray them with this once more before I switch over to the spray I’ll use all summer. Do plumcot/aprium/etc hybrids require unusual pollination trees?
Apriums are at least partially self fertile, but will benefit with another apricot or aprium blooming with it. I assume this is from the predominant apricot parentage, as most apricots are self fertile.
Pluots are not self fertile and require a Japanese plum or other pluot blooming at the same time.
20 mi north of TN/KY line, have been Z6b forever, ‘new’ map moved me up to Z7.
I long ago gave up on apricots & pluots… they typically broke dormancy here in February… not a chance in Hades that they could bloom or set fruit without them freezing out.
Tomcot was a top performer, year-in/year-out, for Don Yellman at Great Falls VA. I never grew it, but I guess if I were gonna try one, that would be the first one I’d try.
Wonder of wonders, I have a 4 years in the ground Goldkist that is loaded with tiny apricots. It’s been crazy warm here and the 10 day forecast is frost free. This is a first for me. I know the odds are still against me, but hope springs eternal.
North Texas - apricots are growing strong here. Many flowering now so I expect to see fruit. Tomcot has larger flowers. OrangeRed is sparse - probably due to high chill hours so may need to replace it. Robada blooming well. Sugar Pearls has just started waking so it is indeed late to bloom. Flavor Delight in 15 gal container has set many fruit - last yr harvested about 50 and expect more this yr. Early spring is putting rush on everything to flower.
Shibumi, I see you are in South Louisiana (zone9)? I am in this area and I see that you have low chill cherry and apricots and aprium. Can you give any updates on if they are still alive and have they put out any fruit (how many years had before fruit?) I am thinking about getting a Katy apricot, Gold Kist apricot, Flavor Delight Aprium but I am concerned about the high humidity in South Louisiana and South Mississippi. I am also curious about the low chill cherry but have concerns about high humidity as well.
This spring I got my first two Katy apricots…literally 2. It was only the second leaf from planting in '22, so that’s not too bad. Harvest was April 29th, so the good news is that is early and less exposure to insects and disease, though being early it could be affected by a late freeze. They were delicious.
This is the first year my Flavor Grenade fruited. I had hundreds set, thinned to about 70, and was able to harvest and eat most of them over a good 4+ weeks as I don’t mind a bit of sour with my sweet. I was not sure how to tell when they are fully ripe. They were beautiful anyway with no insect issues or disease. I bagged a lot of them but the rest did OK.
Sadly over about 5 weeks late summer early fall, I had many hundreds of blooms on the Flavor Grenade, so I am not sure how many, if any, flower buds I have left for next spring.
Now next year who knows what will find them or the trees… We’ll see.
Now low chill sweet cherries. Most have died. I am a fool to even try them here but I’ve always been quite enamored by cherries so…
I still have a small Lapins. Only 2 years so no blooms. I tried grafting other varieties on it but none took.
I’ve had success so far with the Asian pears. I just grafted some fire blight resistant European or hybrid pears this past spring, so several years before I see how they play out.
I will try to provide some photos soon. I’m in North Florida and I have a perfectly structured Flavor Delight Aprium. We got 500 hours of chill this year and I got some blooms at the tips of some of the branches. Looks like about half of the blooms pollinated and I’ll have about 10 Apriums assuming they make it to maturity. In the past the problem with this tree has been lack of blooms. It is now probably about five or six years old. Except for the blooming troubles the tree has been very bug and fungus resistant. It doesn’t even get sprayed as much as my other trees. It does better than all of my other stone fruit trees when it comes to leaf quality. It might get a tad too much shade where I’ve planted it. Around 12 noon or 1 PM it gets shade. But seriously easy tree to take care of. A few sprays of captan a year and she’s good.
I also have two young pluots planted very close by. (flavor king and Flavor Grenade). Both have bloomed great but the overlapping bloom times are short. both are smothered with Flowers the first two springs I’ve had them. Looks like the Flavor Grenade has some fruit this year also. Still waiting but I think the Flavor King will as well.
So far my Cherries have been a bust. Not going to lie. I will try fertilizing them a lot more frequently this year. But if that doesn’t improve things than I’m only giving the experiment a few more years. It’s too much work for what I think it just too touchy of a tree to thrive in the humid climate. I also think Zaiger when it comes to the Royal Crimson has a tree that just doesn’t like to flower. The Royal Lee so far seems to be doing the best but it is very young. I’ve had one minnie already die on me and the other also just doesn’t seem to want to thrive much. Again I’ll try more frequent fertilizing but so far these things haven’t done much of anything. I do think I might have a cherry or two on my Lapins and Royal Lee this year. We’ll see. But One or two cherries is still a bust in my opinion. Especially when I see the Pluots having no problems. I suspect the low chill cherries just aren’t on target yet. Yes they might be low chill. But otherwise maybe they aren’t good trees in terms of production. They wake up when the Pluots do they just don’t bloom hardly at all.
I have a Mormon graft on one of my trees and this year is its first year blooming. So we will see I’ll report back in a few months. Maybe sooner if they don’t make any fruit, just a handful of blooms. Flavor delight aprium is in its second year graft but no blooms on it so maybe it’ll be more reliable.
I think my Flavor Delight Aprium is about five or six years old. It was probably three when I transplanted it into my yard. It quickly took off. It really does seem to be mostly disease and bug resistant and I’m in muggy north central Florida so that says a lot for a stone fruit. The tree has a great shape and is fairly large now. In previous years I never got more than a blossom or two. This year I had a lot more and looks like I’ve set 10 apricots. For a tree of its size that isn’t that good.
A few things were different about this winter. First it was the coldest we’ve had since I’ve lived here. We got 600 chill hours. Second in the fall I tried a trick where you spray a foliar spray in late fall with molasses, seaweek kelp, and fish fertilizer on the leaves. Not sure how much that helped or not. But in general this year I’m going to heavily fertilize my tree and see if that further increases bloom next year.
My Flavor Grenade Pluot and Flavor King Pluot are probably only 3 or 4 years old. Last two years they both bloomed like crazy. Last year the Flavor Grenade had a few set but they dropped. This year the Flavor Grenade has problem 20 fruit set. No need to prune because a bunch of them are dropping already. Self aborted fruit or flowers that didn’t pollinate properly.
The Flavor King looks like it has set 3 maybe 4 fruit. The rest are all super tiny, turning yellow, and falling. The Flavor Kind seems to start blooming a weak or two after the Flavor Grenade so the overlap is only maybe a weak or two. And with a few heavy rains it really makes cross pollination hard. I took some flowers from the Flavor King and worked them over the Flavor Delight Aprium and Flavor Grenade. Again I don’t know if that did anything or not. But the Flavor King doesn’t seem to get cross pollinated as well because I think the Flavor Grenade is blossom is fading when the Flavor King is most fertile.
I need to find something that can cross pollinate my Flavor King better cause I hear it’s really tasty. I have a Santa Rosa Plum but maybe it is too shaded cause I can’t even get that one to bloom. It has been a bust so far like my Cherries. After like 5 or 6 years of trying I’ve only had one cherry set and it looks like it is going to drop as it is already changing color.
I have a FrankenCot. Unknown peach rootstock.
I have these apricots grafted to it:
Harcot
Hoyt Montrose
Robada
Tomcot - most of that branch appears to have died this winter
And new ones just added:
Zard and Haro Star (thank you @ukie)
I had petal fall a while ago and am now at shuck split and have worried about not having my surround sprayed during these warm nights. I’m afraid to go look, but hopefully there are so many fruitlets that I can thin out any that are damaged.
Flavor King never sets much no matter how many pollinators or how much bloom. Flavor Grenade on the other hand, sets like there’s no tomorrow. I have to thin off 90%.
In my greenhouse Flavor King sets enough but very little compared to most pluots. Enough that I usually thin a little because I like big high-quality fruit. But thinning is optional. It does set well compared to Flavor Supreme.
Flavor Grenade is a pain to thin. At thinning stage, the fruits blend right in with the leaves. If you ripped off every fruit you could see it would still have too much. In that regard it’s a lot like some Asian pears.
