Should I keep Jerseycot apricot

I have a decent amount of apricot scions (Zard, Afghanistan, Henderson, Hardy Iowa, Orange Red, Precious, Tomcot) from Bob Purvis,plus some pluot scions. I was going to graft them to a 4 year old Jerseycot tree. If I really wanted to, I could probably graft every major limb to a new variety. The Jerseycot, however, seems very healthy and has lots of blooms for the first time. On the other hand, I’ve heard mostly sub-par reviews of Jerseycot’s flavor. The only homegrown apricot I’ve tried is the Chinese / Mormon. If Jerseycot is only as good as those, I’d probably graft most of it over. I’m wondering if anyone has a more positive view of Jerseycot that would cause me to leave more of the limbs “as is.”

OK, my hugely colored perspective: there are a lot of qualities you must look for in apricots, and surviveability has to rank near the top. A healthy Jerseycot may turn out to be fairly good, and the others might be tastier but not thrive. So I’d argue that you should keep the Jerseycot option open unless it’s just too complicated.

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I guess something else to consider is that I haven’t grafted a lot of apricots and only have about 50% success (at best) with peaches. Another option is that I have a plum rootstock that grew into a small tree. I’ve been grafting plums onto it and also grafted a Tomcot on it last year that took and is blooming right now. I know it may ultimately fail but I’ll probably try a few on that tree. I wish I knew which rootstock it is. It was originally a Mt. Royal that got hit by deer and regrew from the roots. More than likely it is a Myro.

Well, you’re way ahead of me- I budded apricot to plum a few years ago and while they calloused over just fine they would not pop. But that was on suckers from an Italian prune plum, and your plum rootstock was, you say, likely Myro. I did chip bud apricot to Marianna successfully- my one time!

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I found it a good flavor but watery, however location matters and I may have had too-wet years during tis harvest. Its also very productive. Zard and Afghanistan take a long time to fruit, I finally gave up on Afghanistan this year since my 10+ year tree has only produced a couple dozen apricots all the years I have had it. Zard is better but is still slow.

My suggestion is at least let it fruit this year a bit. If you have too many varieties to fit you can “back up” a few of the varieties by putting them on small shoots at the very top of the Jerseycot portion, and use those next year to topwork Jerseycot if its a dud.

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