Folks, has anyone successfully grow apricot in Ottawa/Zone 4 climate? I got a Westcot last year, this spring it does sprout but soon all the shooting dehydrated and died, not sure what is going on here. A friend of mine got a Precious apricot and pretty much is the same condition. So I was wondering has anyone successfully grown it in this climate.
Thanks
i have westcot, brookcot, harcot and hoyt montrose grafted on my black ice plum here in z4 n. Maine as well as a improved canadian plum . the brookcot and canadian plum grafts are flowering for the 1st time. ill report later if they fruit. the black ice portion has thousands of flowers so ill be pruning soon.
interesting, I highly suspect mine was due to late frost, because I saw it even flowered this year
focus on late flowering ones if you want to have any chance to get fruit. many flower too early and get zapped by frost despite being z4 hardy. Purvis nursery has a good description list of cold hardy apricots. welcome to the site. im directly across the St. John from Edmunston , N.B. my relatives come from Q.C.
These guys have lots of cold hardy fruit selections
Keep the dead trees in ground to see if they send up any suckers. Then you can tell whether the rootstock or the grafted cultivar died.
Westcot, Morden 604, Debbies Gold, Brookcot, Casino, Baker’s Gold, Arctic Sun-series, and Zard are all plenty winter hardy for zone 4. However, they are not well adapted to the wet conditions and fluctuating late-winter temperatures of the east.
Precious is probably your best bet if you can get it on its own roots or a non-apricot rootstock. Definitely worth a second try.
If you don’t expect to see temperatures below -35 C, you may do better with Harrow or Rutgers breeding program selections (Hargrand, Jerseycot, etc). They are bred for the wet weather conditions but not as deep-freeze hardy.
Ilona apricot is supposed to make it there, I have it in zone 5b and we had an exceptionally early and prolonged cold winter, and it’s growing fine! Red-Orange apricot is also doing well, but it’s supposed to be a zone 5, so it’s probably not hardy enough for you.
I’d back up @MinnesotaApricot 's wisdom of keeping them in the ground, the rootstock could be an issue.
Mine are on Krymsk 6?(I forgot the number) and myrobalan, I don’t like myrobalan in general, but it is hardy, and I actually bought the Red-Orange apricot because I wanted my apricots on Krymsk rootstock and that was the only one on Krymsk, and Ilona was the only Russian variety available at that time and the only zone 4 variety, I like having extra cold hardiness if possible.
they are growing great on my black ice plum. brookcot had 6 blooms. 2 set fruit for the 1st time. yea!
I’d be curious about cold hardy Apricots as well.
I’m in zone 6. I have planted apricots 3 times and killed 6 different varieties of “ cold hardy Apricots”. I only had a single tree that made it through 1 winter. All the rest died the very first winter.
They sell plenty of zone appropriate apricot trees but it seems like they absolutely can’t stand any early freeze and require a long slow off ramp into freezing weather in order to harden off properly.
So I would love to hear from anybody who can make this work and what varieties work for them
if the trees dont grow well just graft them to a plum. they grow very vigorous on mine. once the grafts fill in, the upper half of my black ice will be all apricots. i did this out of necessity as i didnt have anything else to graft apricot to. id be curious to see how they would do on my 5ft. Siberian peaches. i may try some on them next spring.
The trees grew fantastically, it was the early frosts they couldn’t handle. They would die back to the ground and not even the rootstock would survive.
wow! i thought the problem with them was only early blooms getting zapped. i was going to put in some apricots on their own roots. i guess ill just get some plum rootstocks to graft instead. i noticed yesterday 2 small brookcot fruitlets and about 20 improved canadian plums set for the 1st time. the black ice portion has hundreds ill need to thin heavily if they all set. the whole yard smells of plum blossoms.
I think westcot can handle cold winter in ottawa/z4 climate, but early sprout/bloom is a true issue here. Deep inland area like Alberta, these cultivars work perfectly fine, I heard
the current state is, all buds are dead, but the truck is somehow still alive because it even fill cold under sunshine, which means at least it is not fully dead yet lol
good suggestion, I will try to get a mustang root stock and graft few candidate cultivars on it
the brookcot fruitlets didnt hold but the branch is still small. harcot , hoyt montrose, mormon and west cot all survived and grown from last year. maybe next year they all will bloom.
That is interesting. I have some apricots in Winnipeg and the issues with apricots here are cold winter temps killing the buds, and late frosts that kill the buds or fruitlets. For the main varieties I grow (Westcot and Scout), it seemed that I would see complete bud kill if winter temps were below -32C (-25.6F). So that the trees wouldn’t bloom at all in spring. But this winter we had a minimum of -35C (-31F) and I still had at least 50% bloom in the top of the tree, and significant fruit set. Whereas the previous winter I saw winter min of only about -31C (-23.8F) and there was virtually no bloom, and absolutely no fruit set in the top of the tree. I attribute the difference to poor hardening off in the fall of 2024.
But I have to say that I haven’t seen apricots killed outright due to early frost. And I hope I never do. That would be just one more thing…
I get some apricot crop almost every year by growing some trees as close to the ground as possible, and burying in snow as soon as cold weather hits in early winter. Our snow tends to stay around once it hits the ground. We don’t have as many winter warm-ups as you do in Ottawa. Snow burial of trees is not as beneficial if it is so warm that the snow gets wet and heavy, or (as hardly need be said) if it melts completely. Since the insulation value of the snow is in the air trapped in the snow, light fluffy snow is good, wet soggy snow is bad. I always deal with some broken branches due to the weight of the melting snow in spring, but I am finding ways to deal with that.
But I am not saying that will work for you.
This is how we protected some young seedling apricots last winter at our hobby orchard just north of the city. A couple of them have a small amount of fruit set despite a -5C (23F) frost in spring when they were at first white.
What specific varieties are you growing in Winnipeg?
Born raised and spent most of my life in SE AB. Grew westcot there. Took better part of a decade to produce and only got a crop maybe every 4 yrs (damn chinooks).
When they Did produce? Caty bar the door and back up the truck, you would not Believe how much they produced. 10 yrs later I’ve been feeding the oriole’s apricot jam and ran out yesterday. After eating what we could, giving to family and neighbors we made jam. Not kidding.
Moved to Sk a decade ago for kid’s opportunity(land); planted westcot and debbies gold. My experience the westcot are more winter hardy, none have produced yet despite some flowers. I dought we’ll ever see a crop here.
There are some cultivars being developed here in SK. (believe nw of regina??)
Arctic dawn, dusk, twilight. “If” you can find them perhaps they would work, although if you’re Solid z4 I’d guess westcot would serve well.
At home here in the city, I have trees of Scout and Westcot, and also a Wescot seedling. The Westcot has a year-old Zard graft the set a few fruit this spring. I also grafted a number of other apricot varieties to it, but won’t brag about that until I can confirm takes. My apricot grafting has had low success percentage, around 25%, some years even worse. The Scout tree is also grafted to Westcot as they make good pollenization partners. The Westcot seedling has year-old grafts of Zard, Debbie’s Gold and Precious. The Precious set a few fruit this spring. Also put more varieties on it this spring, but we will see. The Westcot and Westcot seedling trees are fairly small (7 feet tall) and are given protection over winter with 150 watt infrared bulbs that are plugged in when temps are below -22C. The trees are wrapped by multiple layers of tarps. This kind of thing:
