I LOVE apricots, but I’m having no luck growing them. My tree just grows leaves…every year, another crop of—leaves 
I’m thinking of getting a Flavor Delight, which seems to rank high in taste tests (at least according to the sellers!) but I’d like to hear some first-hand opinions. First, does it have a real apricot taste? And second, if it doesn’t taste like an apricot, is it still good? Any opinions on flavor, sweetness, level of acid? I’m not a fan of sourness in plums… Thanks!
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Yes, it tastes like an apricot but with a plum after-taste. Compared to early ripening apricots, FD is the sweetest apricot that I ever tasted. Produces a bigger crop when pollinated by Goldkist apricot. Young fruits are very suceptible to Frost’s.
Here in Southern California, it ripens around mid-May. The tree is not drought resistant.
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I like Summer Delight even better. My tree that I planted last season produced one aprium on it. The flash is firm, sweet and very flavorful. It does not get soft like an apricot does but it ripens later in the season, late July early Aug. I live the the Bay Area/ Silicon Valley.
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If I had only one tree, it would be FD, despite the fact I don’t get a crop every year, with late frosts.
The taste is very like apricot, the fruits slightly larger, definitely juicier
They ripen before the apricots - before the Harglow
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I’m not a fan. Grew it near Fresno and in my greenhouse in west Texas. No idea how it would do in N coastal CA.
I prefer Tasty Rich, Tomcot, Robada and Orangered.
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What was it you didn’t like about Flavor Delight, @fruitnut?
I’ve never had the cots you mentioned, and definitely could not grow them here, alas. I’d always rather have an apricot than an aprium but we just get too much fog (we’re just a couple blocks from the ocean) and we have mild summers and mild winters…in fact during the drought we hardly had seasons at all!
@RichSV I’d never heard of Flavor Delight. Just looked it up and I guess it was new in 2016. It sounds good! Would you say it’s more like a plum or an apricot? You get more summer heat up there than we get in Santa Cruz, but DVN says it’ll grow in zones 7-10. We don’t even get up to 500 chill hours here, but looks like they’re not entirely certain how much it requires.
FD is very much more like an apricot than a plum. I found it not all that sweet and don’t remember much flavor. Tasty Rich is much better IME if you can find it. It seems to be very low chill and sets good for me.
Thanks for the info! Tasty Rich sure sounds good! DWN says it needs 700 chill, but it sounds like you’re saying it’s set for you with much less?
The main reason I think it’s low chill is that it blooms very early. The other apricots I like such as Robada and Orangered struggle to bloom under my conditions. The late blooming apricots like Montrose are very late, like never, that’s pretty late. The buds swell slightly and fall off.
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Now that’s a level of sophistication about fruit trees I don’t have! I guess the reasoning is that if they bloom early, that means they’re not waiting for those extra chill hours like the Montrose?
Alas, on my tree (a Katy, with grafts of many other low chills) the buds all fall off too. I get about ten blossoms a year, sigh.
Just looked up Alpine, and it looks like you’re at nearly 5000 feet! I love the southwest, lived for many years in New Mexico. But you get quite a bit of chill I would assume!
…and I’m afraid I’ll drive you crazy with all these questions @fruitnut --but one more, just so that I can get a general idea of your taste in fruit, to get perspective on your opinion of these different cultivars—do you enjoy medium to high acid levels in fruit, the tangier fruits? I generally try to find low-acid cultivars because I get instant mouth sores from acidic ones (even though I enjoy a little tang with the sugar).
I’ve grafted flavor delight and it is absolutely the first thing in my orchard to bloom the last two springs. So I dont envision getting a crop but maybe once every 5-6 years.
I’m the original brix junkie. That is I like sweet fruits. Sweet/tart is good if the tart doesn’t stand out over the sweet. My favorites are the low acid nectarines. They have high flavor that isn’t acid related. If Tasty Rich is fully ripe it’s not tart but I’m not sure it’s low acid.
The bud abortion issue with apricots and to a lesser extent with pluots is I think related as much to a short winter as to a lack of chilling. My greenhouse gets more chilling but a shorter winter. The apricots bloom better outside with less chilling, about 700 hrs below 45, than in the greenhouse with 1200 hrs. I have high control in the greenhouse and can cram 1200 hrs into 70 days. Outside it would be 700 hrs in 120 days.
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Frustrating!
Okay, we’re on the same page then–I like sweet! Interesting about the short winter issue. Out here we’ve got a short winter AND lack of chilling.
If I could just get good ripe apricots at the store I wouldn’t be on this quest to grow something apricot-like. But I grew up with a Blenheim tree in a slightly warmer town, and I’ve never forgotten what tree-ripened apricots taste like!
Hi Lizzy,
My Flavor Delight tree, fourth season, was very productive, about 30 apriums. It requires at least 300 chill hours according to the tag on it. The fruit on it stays firm unlike an apricot when it over ripens. The taste is, however, somewhat bland compared to an apricot. The taste of a Summer Delight aprium is much more intense It requires around 500 hours or more chill hours…We had close to 1000 chill hours this past season in the Santa Clara Valley.
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For those who are wondering about Flavor Delight’s parentage, it’s parentage is, apricot x ( plum x apricot), or 75 % apricot, 25% plum.
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FD is much older than than 2016 - I planted mine a dozen years ago
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