I went to store yesterday and saw these nice apricots only sale for 99 cents a pound!
Thinking of how much care and efforts have been putting in to produce such good size, and clear fruits, I felt sorry for the apricots producers.
I had a apricot tree, it totally gave me above 50 fruits over its 5 years of life. I pruned it, sprayed it, and fertilized it every year. The fruits were about half the size, some part of it had eaten by birds, some had bugs inside, some had scabs,some were rotten…I had to worry about later spring frost, worry about if there were bees to pollinate, worry about squirrels. Possums , 4 legged and two legged steal the fruits…a lot of hassle to grow apricots, and any fruits. If the apricot only sale for this kind of price, I will seriously reconsider not to grow fruits myself.
Sure, if they taste good. But I’ve not had anything from the store even close to what I can grow. Apricots are not only difficult to grow but are very sensitive to harvest date. A day or two longer on the tree makes a big difference. We know that store bought were picked way too early.
I bought a couple this spring at $4.39 a lb. They were hardly eatable.
In my greenhouse apricots are one of the easiest fruits to grow. They’re big, beautiful, and delicious. Even outside they’re easier than any other stone fruit. It’s just spring freezes that cause major losses.
Apple is the only stone or pome fruit sold around me that I would bother to buy at a store.
The rest aren’t worth anything they would charge… Unless you are making something cooked down.
I have had good fresh apricots from a store only once, and it was a revelation. They are wonderful if properly ripe. But most of the time they’re not worth buying at any price.
People keep telling me they’re difficult so I haven’t planted any, but it’s one of the fruits I most want to produce myself. Any thoughts about planting outside in Zone 6b? The last couple years we had frosts well into April.
I got 5 apricots off a 3rd leaf Alfred Apricot in Zone 5 this year
I agree with most of the answers and am surprised sometimes by the quality of some fruit.This week,my local supermarket,had two varieties of Plumcots/Pluots and one was fairly good and the other exceptional,compared to the usual Dino Egg that is offered.
I only have 2 good memories of apricots… One was a week long rafting trip on the Green River in Utah. After a week rafting and camping we stayed one night in, I think, Price Utah. The little place had a huge apricot tree in the backyard. I gorged myself on the little things. Amazing.
Next was a friend’s tree in Albuquerque. Same thing. A beautiful tree with zero pest or disease issues.
I’m many, many hundreds of miles from any commercial apricot production. Who knows where the occasional apricot in my local store comes from or how many weeks it took to get there.
Are they any good, I never had one that tasted as good as mine, but honestly until I found growingfruit, I hadn’t realized they are difficult to grow.
I do buy peaches, apples, cherries, and nectarines.
Two doors down the street from us dwells an apricot tree that produces a crop every five years or so. I think the primary difficulty is frost after blooming. This was a crop year. We made two batches of jam and dried nearly two gallons of 'em, while arriving after the owner had picked most of the tree. Since I already have fruit growing goals filling my yard, I thank our neighbor for keeping that tree. I’ll offer to help prune it in tangible thanks.
I just bought some nectarines at the store, a cultivar that apparently colors well before approaching ripeness. Oi.
Too many apples offered at the store are the same: cheap in every sense of the term, making me treasure those I invest in, in my yard.
I get the funniest looks at the fruit market as I won’t buy a stone fruit (peach, nectarine, apricot) without smelling it first. I lean down into the bin and take a deep sniff. If I am not smelling something reminiscent of the flavor of the fruit, I am not buying…
My own kids thought it was silly of me, but having grown up and purchasing their own fruit and noticing just how tasteless is frequently is, they have started doing it themselves.
That being said, I primarily only grow what I can’t get cheaply locally (with tomatoes, potatoes and garlic being noted exceptions;-)
The store bought ones come from CA. Mostly near Reedley. I moved there in 2000 just to grow fruits. And lived in the area 4 years. There was a commercial apricot orchard not too far away. One year it had apricots bigger than 3 inches. Even I can’t do that. Those were good not great. I went several times after harvest and gleaned a 5 gal buckets worth
So true, especially in cold zone. Apricot tree is hardto grow and the fruitsare hard to set. I don’t think I made even with the cost of buying a tree+shipping + all the care expenses by harvested 50ish fruits throughout 5 years.
I only had 2 apricots this year and I had to harvest them earlier so the animals would not harvest them before me. In a sense, my tree ripen fruits aren’t really tree ripen. I would say they tasted better because I grew them. The store bought are bigger and better looking than mine. As far as the taste goes. Some are pretty decent apricot flavor. Some are on under ripen side and a little soure.
Couple of weeks ago, I bought Red Cherry for the same price. That batch of cherry was really good, sweet and firm just like a good bing cherry is supposed to tasted like. They are definitely better than the ones grown in my yard. Actually, in my taste, they were a bit too sweet. But it is better on sweet side than tasted blend.
You are in very hot location, I would imagine apricot grow well and tasted very good there
I see a awful lot of green on those in that picture 
.
Some may have gotten good store bought appricots, but we never have. So we won’t buy them from the grocery store. Farmers market, yes but only if they are squishy ripe. Skin perfection is highly suspect to us also.
The best store bought fruit are the ones that can be allowed to ripen on the tree. Namely grapes and citrus. Citrus can be good, occasionally very good. Grapes are often good. The main issue with grapes is commercial varieties are mild flavored.
Among fruits not ripened on the tree apples can be pretty good in the store. Sweet cherries can be good but usually aren’t. They are picked way too soon. But at least I can taste one before buying. One taste and I move on. Mango are sometimes picked a month or more too early. The fruit isn’t even fully filled out.
Even though I grow stone fruits myself, I still buy peach/nectarine from local supermarket. To my experiences, supermarket fruits not all that bad, their fruit quality/ sweetness just are not stable. Sometime, I bought very good peach/nectarine with very good price. Quality are better than mine own. keep in mind, I have to pick my fruits little earlier to beat the animals do it for me. I read from other threads that some members here do the same. Especially the years that I don’t have a lot of peach/ nectarines, I must secure the fruits first by picking up before they are fully ripe. But if I have treeful of fruits, I don’t mind animals picking some, I will harvest them as late as possible. Usually, good fruits in the supermarket sell either as cheap as .99 or regular 2.99 a pound which are all reasonable priced
Yes, sweet cherries usually are the hit or miss. Most times is the miss. It is lucky to buy sweet cherries that are not watery
True that’s often the case. Home growers pick too early to beat animals and weather. That’s what I like about my greenhouse. Only fully ripe fruit needs picking. I have seen screen shelters to solve the animal issue. I had one in Amarillo and loved it.
This is how I feel about apples, stone fruit, most vegetables. Also kiwi, grapes, and of course the common tropical fruits.
Way I see it, I have to have a reasonable shot at growing it myself without too much work or money, and also end up with something either qualitatively better or substantially cheaper than what’s in the grocery store, preferably both.
And that is just the conditions for me to grow it. I will still buy the things I grow from the grocery store, because my growing season is incredibly limited compared to the commercial growers, who can rely on a combination of the growing seasons of the West coast, the Northeast, Florida, Mexico, Chile, and greenhouses.
I grow tomatoes myself, but only for fresh eating, because once canned, frozen, or dried, they lose their quality advantage over store bought. And when I don’t have fresh tomatoes in my garden, I buy them. But, I’m trying to extend my tomato growing season, and I suspect I’ll get to the point that, without too much extra effort, I can have homegrown tomatoes, good homegrown tomatoes, most months of the year. So, that’s worthwhile.
I don’t grow cherries or cabbage, because both are really hard to grow in my area without either tons of chemicals or tons of defects (and usually, you end up with both), and the cherries I’d get would be roughly the same quality as the ones available at that time of year in the store, and cabbage I’d get would be lower quality than what the store has.
I grow dill. I don’t grow cilantro. Grocery store dill is crazy expensive, cilantro dirt cheap. The quality is about the same. Easy choice.
I grow figs and jujube because they’re easy and you can’t get them in the store at all. Berries I can grow better quality, and vastly cheaper. So I have lots of berries. Except cranberries. I can’t beat the commercial guys there on quality or cost, and they aren’t easy for me to grow.
The citrus I grow are either ones that require some work but I couldn’t buy even if I wanted to (satsumas) or ones that are essentially no work at all (dunstan, thomasville once I get one, etc). Other tropicals are also things that I just can’t get otherwise, but are also not that hard to keep alive, like semi-hardy guavas, barbados cherry, etc.
I don’t grow watermelons. Sure, I’ve got the right soil and climate, so they are easy to grow, but the store bought ones are tasty enough by my standards, and I don’t want to give up so much space to a plant that will only give me a handful of fruits. Maybe in the future I’ll mess around with them, but for now, they’re marginally on the not worthwhile side. Cantaloupe are similar, but even less worthwhile, but Uzbek melons are only available in the US at one fruit stand in LA run by one Armenian farmer three-days’ drive from me. So I grow my own Uzbek melons.
Not saying this is how everyone should value their time, labor, and the fruits of their labor. It’s just how I judge mine. Yes, a lot of times grocery store stuff isn’t as good, but sometimes it’ll surprise you. And, within reasonable, I try to reward the grocery stores for bringing quality produce to the masses. The more market pressure their is for affordable but very good fruit, the more financially, time, climate, or land limited people will have access to the things I have the luxury of deciding if I want to grow myself. This is also why I always buy those cool “exotic” bananas when the store has them–I want the grocery stores to look and say, “hey, the people like having more than a single variety of banana–let’s work out a supply chain for some manzano/baby/red/ice cream/etc bananas.”
I can get red peaches here as low as 49c a pound from Stater Bros, I like to bake with them. This is why for that price, I’m not going to spray, the cost of spraying, the space for storage, and the time and effort doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t have a big yard either.
I used to dislike apricots because I only ate store-bought apricots and they tasted anywhere from subpar to down right awful.
Somehow, I was interested in grafting it to my peach trees. Tree-ripened apricots taste so much better than store-bought. No comparison. The only apricot I will eat these days are home -grown.That’s how I realized that apricots can be a wonderful fruit.
Over the years, I have bought peaches, nectarines and plums from several places including Costco and Trader Joe’s. It is a hit or miss, most were misses. These are the fruit that worth growing just because store bought are mostly awful.