How much chilling do you get @bleedingdirt?
My second-leaf Orangered tree had a decent bloom and set some fruit. Not a strong set, but hopefully will be enough to get the first taste of this variety.
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My Orangered garfted last year was full of fruit buds last month. Since then, they were wiped out by our fluctuating temp.
In a good year about 1000 utah ch and about 800 below 45. Last few years have been about 75% of normal.
My Orangered apricot grafted last year just started to open first flowers. It seems like it is late flowering comparing to the several other varieties. It also survived several 17-25 F freezing nights and did not show any damage. Does this apricot have plums in its parentage? The leaves look slightly different from regular apricots and it has clusters of flowers like a plum.
I think it’s straight apricot.
OR is the best apricot I’ve ever eaten! I grow and have eaten Chinese, Golden Sweet, Afghanistan, Sugar Pearls, Tomcot, Flavor Delight, Blenheim, and Moorpark.
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Its definitely one of the best. For me its not consistently great, it depends on how much rain it got. Tomcot is not as much affected by the rain so overall I put it a bit better.
@Antmary, OR looks like pretty much every other apricot. I hope you don’t have the wrong thing. Mine bloomed with the other cots and got completely fried this spring.
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Interesting what you said about rain. Here in Utah, we’re the 2nd driest state in the nation next to Nevada. That’s probably why my OR was off the charts so good.
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BTW, I love all my cots! However, the OR just stood out as the most sweetly unique flavored and the texture was a little softer.
They can be over watered anywhere. My best ones have been about 26 brix. Those are divine. I’ve had plenty at 16-18 brix. Those are nothing special. I’ve got one small tree outdoors, I think on K9, that doesn’t grow much. That’s where the best ones have been. A big overly vigorous tree on Viking produces 14-20 brix. I had to keep cutting it back in order to cover it from spring freezes. Big roots, untimely rain, and small top equals low brix. So I took the tree out.
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I put my OR graft on top of the Chinese tree a couple years ago. Man, did it take off! So I had my first ones last year.
Mine also looks more like an apricot than a plum. Tomorrow I’ll try to make a good picture of the flowers.
Maria,
I am surprised that your OR are later than mine while your zone is colder than mine. Mine started pushing buds in late Feb this year and was fried when the temp dropped in the teen and single digit several times…
@mamuang this weather is crazy. We had the minimum of 17 F one night and several days in low 20s. Your weather was colder than mine. A. Plums had tight cluster and they had no damage. Apricots were very strange. The most advanced flower buds that showed first pink were not damaged very much, some of them had brown pistils, but they are flowering right now and look fine. The majority of flower buds which were less advanced got fried, they are dry and falling off. The trees look very patchy with a few flowers here and there. It is hard to say which varieties were more hardy, when they set fruits it will be more obvious. So far I am just guessing by the number of dried flower buds on each variety. Pixie cot had so many buds and most of them died but there are still some flowers. Chinese sweet pit has about 50% of dead ones. And Orangered has no dead buds on several grafted branches. My apricot trees stay in the shade of the house all winter and it may help them to wake up later than if they had been in the full sun.
Maria,
These past couple of months, our weather was definitely colder than yours. We had several night of single digits and more nights in the teens.
Both Tomcot and Orangered were toasted. Before this, I have ordered Zard and also acquired Afganistan sciowoid. Maybe, I could have apricots once every few years 
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Mamuang,
How is your Nikita’s Gift doing?
Tony
Not sure. I am supposed to remove the protection but the weather has been unpredictable for so long.
Yea, I think I’ll be marginal for it as well. We’ll see, since I grafted it this year and it looks like I’ll have at least one take.