The summer of 2022 was extremely busy for me. A lot of my trees had strong production, but the main reason was that my wife traveled for two months during the summer, and I had to deal with all that harvest by myself (on top of my full-time job and all other stuff). In particular, both apricot and plum harvests were very strong and they pretty much followed each other. So I really didn’t have time to write about fruit during the harvest season.
Now, I would like to offer some fragmentary observations.
Apricots. With dozens of apricot varieties that I grow, I’ve pretty much become an apricot snob. Many apricot varieties just don’t cut it for me for fresh eating. They go directly to the drier or into jam. I don’t have a full list, but, from the top of my had, these include Harcot, Hoyt Montrose, Redsweet, Tardif de Bordaneil, Tilton. Note that some varieties (e.g., Paiwand, Suphany, Turkey) have been specifically selected for drying and should be used in that way. A large graft of a variety called Le Crème fruited for the first time (and had a bumper crop). It turned out to be a typical white apricot, which is both good (because white apricots are very flavorful) and not so good (because all white apricots taste very similar to each other). Tomcot was a good surprise this year. Typically, it has a huge set, and apparently I never thinned it well enough, so the fruit, despite decent size, were not sweet enough for me. This year, finally, I thinned the Tomcot tree much more rigorously, and the fruit were huge and much sweeter than usual. It’s still not the in the top tier of apricots flavor wise, but can be quite good for its season, if thinned mercilessly.
Gage plums. I had to process a lot since I had way more than I could eat by myself. They are great vacuum sealed and frozen, and they also make a very good jam. I tried drying some and it’s ok as a novelty but not nearly as good as dried apricots or dried blue plums (prunes). Another note: the Pearl plum ripened for me for the first time and I liked it very, very much! Excellent flavor! By some reports it’s a prune/gage hybrid, but the fruit is much more gage-like.
Pears. The Warren pear is a treasure, the tree is FB resistant and in my conditions (California climate and many other varieties grafted on it and near it) it’s also precocious and productive. The fruit can be ripened right on the tree (at least in my climate) but also keep well in a fridge. The flesh is buttery, juicy, and very flavorful.
Figs. Let’s be honest, you cannot eat a lot of fresh figs. I know it’s shocking for some, but it’s the truth. Therefore, you have to process them. I don’t particularly like them vacuum sealed and frozen. So, it’s either jam (which is ok but not top rate for me, at least in comparison to apricot jam) or drying. At least, I was able to trade some fresh figs locally for home grown tomatoes (I didn’t have time to grow tomatoes myself this year). So, I removed a bunch of fig trees this fall. I will use this space for something more useful.