First pic was in May/second in June of 2012…about a month between pics.
Found some pictures of these while going through an old hard drive…A lovely apricot. For some reason both my trees died (i’m starting to think it was borers===they were on Lovell). I still have a graft of it and plan on moving that onto Krmysk 1.
Very nice! Doesn’t get much blush. Still haven’t fruited mine outdoors and don’t have any good prospects. But I’ll try again.
Beautiful pristine cots.
Apricot trees are very fragile and when grown here are likely to die without so much as a suicide note. In other words, without an obvious weather related reason, the cambium gets killed. If the trees flowered and started to grow in spring and then dried up and died this was probably what happened, although not a full explanation.
But I have no idea where you live and I’m talking about the humid northeast.
Im in southwest Wisconsin
I have no idea. They leafed out, flowered…set fruit…leaves never grew, fruit shriveled up. I’ve had the exact same thing happen with peaches that were infested with borers. That is why i’m going to put branches of Tomcot on other trees…spread it around and see if i can keep it alive.
I deal with lots of borers but never had them kill a peach tree suddenly, also haven’t had a problem with them on cots, but then I never buy them with peach roots.
One thing I know, In my Z6 where it is humid, my apricots often die without any clear reason, and certainly not from borer damage. I purchase about 10 apricot trees a year for my nursery and their mortality rate dwarfs anything else I grow. On a bad spring I will lose about 20% of the trees in my nursery and about the same percentage of more mature trees in the orchards I manage, and it isn’t the hard winters that kill them particularly- or hard frost in spring either.
I’ve asked around about this issue, and nobody really understands what are the factors that cause them to die.
The strange thing is that my home has more extreme temps, more hard late frosts than the land I use for my apricot and peach nursery. So does most every site where I’ve installed apricot trees and yet the ones on my own property have never died this way.
Question about Tomcot - how dependent is it on another apricot to set fruit? Apricots are sort of interesting here in my area. Some do extremely well here (Blenheim, which I affectionately call Bleh-heim"). Others, no so much.
With all the great apricot varieties for you climate I wouldn’t even consider Tomcot. If your problem is chill hours, I doubt it would be the ticket anyway. Needs 600 hours according to F B and N Inventory.
Alan, not so much chill hours that affect apricots out here (of course it can, but that’s not the specific issue I was referring to), just random production issues with apricots out here, even low chill varieties. I had Gold Kist, which for some inexplicable reason just suddenly died (could have been gophers, but unlikely since the rootstock was still alive), Blenheim and Autumn Glo apricots. I also have Flavorich aprium and Cot-n-Candy apriums, both will have fruit this year. So, will see how those turn out for me. I could add Royal, another popular low chill classic apricot, and if Blenheim continues to be average, I may pull that one out and replace it with Royal.
Patty,
When reading your post,I remember something about Blenheim alternately being called Royal more than once.I checked a few sources and they are apparently two different trees.Why they call Blenheim,Royal,seems kind of confusing to me.Dave Wilson lists a Royal Rosa Apricot.Is that the one mentioned in the message above? Thanks,Brady
You are completely right, Brady. Blenheim IS Royal (interchangeable names). I was thinking of Katy, which is the other very popular apricot in our area - Benheim (Royal) and Katy. It is somewhat reliable here. This is actually my first year for decent fruit set on the Blehheim, 5th year in the ground.
Do you get 500 chill hours there?
Yes, some winters we do. I’m in kind of an unusual microclimate here in Vista. Even though I’m only about 6-7 miles from the ocean, I’m at nearly 1,000 ft. altitude. I have many 500+ ch trees bearing well here.
Patty,
Our Tomcot has been in the ground for 2 years now. It is one of my experimental trees as chill hours seem to evade us here (Maybe 125 this past winter). Happy to say that bloom/set seems pretty decent, time will tell. There are signs of lack of chill but for my back yard it work. Hopefully they taste good as well.
I have Blenheim (2 try at this one), Katy (Is coming out this year, been in the ground 5 years and has never even flowered…sooo bummed out), Cot N Candy (Great producer and Tim loves them) and just planted the new Leah Cot. Also have a lot of pluots. I assume that both apriums and pluots would be pollinators for Tomcot. I do not have any other full apricots (Blenheim too young/no flowers). Pic is from 03-17-2015 fruit set is pretty similar throughout the rest of the tree.
Thanks, Jennifer. I forgot you are the one with the wicked awesome chicken coop, completely and totally coyote-proof. Love that coop, which I could have one. Good to know you’re having some nice success with Tomcot. And, my Cot-N-Candy is full of fruit for the first time this year, hope the fruit for us is as good as it has been for you. Heard that about Katy, which is weird because Belnheim and Katy are the two “go to” apricots for this area. Which is why it didn’t go into my orchard. And you had about 1/2 my chill hours, that was awful, my gosh. Are those blueberries up against the chicken coop btw??
Ya, no leaves is a pretty good sign of lack of chilling. See there are sprouts down low. Hopefully that works out.
Fruitnut, usually for me the leaves are just delayed with stone fruits, and eventually pop out. I know there needs to be enough leaves to provide chlorophyll action to sweeten up the fruits, but there should still be time. It is my apples that will show these weird long nodes in the middle of the branches where there ARE no leaf nodes, for those apples that need higher chill hours. But, they still produce, too. I can actually see the difference between my two Fuji cultivars - one is just “Fuji” and the other is “Red Fuji”. Red Fuji requires more chill hours, has wider leaf nodes and is now just blooming. I already have some set on that tree, but more on the regular Fuji. Both also tend to alternate bear for me, so not sure if that is also related to lack of chill hours, or a quality of that cultivar.
You know I also heard that about Katy but of course I didn’t listen. Every year I said “That’s it I’m pulling it out” lol. but the tree was so pretty and grew so nicely I just couldn’t kill it…well this year it met it’s maker (I’m still sad)! I am sure it will haunt me with suckers everywhere for years to come. 
Hoping I have better luck with Blenheim this time around. Not sure I will try any more apricots if Tomcot doesn’t work out…apriums will fill the that void. Oh yea those are blueberries…can not wait to grub on those babies. yum…yum …yum. So far I have sharpblue, southmoon and sunshine blue and a pink lemonade (Which I love).
Thanks about the coop…I’m sure you have the same problems with Coyotes… holy smokes they are horrible here.
Ditto!
Yes, we have 3 dens surrounding our development. We have a huge, huge coyote population. They are by our house at least 4 to 5 times a day, and those are just the sightings I catch. They yip and howl every night. When I first move into this home, there was a coyote den actually down in our lower part of the yard. I walked down there and into 5 of them one day. I found where they were sneaking in, and had our fence closed up. And subsequently now have 3 big Australian Shepherds that the coyotes are terrified of (my biggest Aussie (70+ lbs). has killed two coyotes that got too close to the house). Along with bobcats, and we believe a mountain lion, but we’ve only seen his/her tracks, and not the big cat, itself. And spotted weasels (very cool to watch), plethora of hawks, kits, kestrels, falcons, owls, vultures, roadrunners and way too many snakes - safe ones and dangerous ones.
Crazy, scary wonderful wildlife! Just got to protect our babies and fruit…lol
