yup. gotta be sneaky about where to plant apricots. Got one of those soulangiana
.... big flowered magnolia which does splendidly in Milwaukee with the lake moderating
the temps, but get blasted 10 miles out in the burbs. everybody puts em out on their
front lawn like they do in the city and rarely do they get flowers. I stuck mine in
under some high trees where it wont get any good strong sun until later in spring and
that puppy has bloomed every single year (surrounded by high fence to keep the damn
deer away from it!) it is heavily mulched in there too.
yeah.. that lower spot is colder most of the time. I had an amazing apricot from
Starks with edible kernels... the first year it produced a bumper crop the squirrels
got wise to the kernels inside and stripped the tree in 2 days ripping off all the
spurs. I took a chain saw to it. No sense training the squirrels to rip all the
unripe fruit off to look for edible kernels.
the best place to plant apricots is on the north side of trees, buildings, fences
that shade it until the sun reaches over them. and mulch them heavily to prevent the
ground thawing too early. In Wisconsin some plants just dont do well in the full
blast of the winter sun either. they dehydrate more than they would when they are
shaded in winter. Ingrid

"gregpresley" wrote:
Apricots are an interesting fruit to grow. I inherited some dwarf variety in
the yard of the house I'm living in. It blooms VERY early (usually the
first week in April) long before our last expected killer frost. For the
most part, I regard it as a great ornamental for its early bloom, and
especially for forcing branches indoors. There are NEVER active bees during
its blooming cycle, but it gets covered in butterflies, which are apparently
enough to get some pollination done. Then 2 weeks after the bloom there is
usually a terrible hard frost and I expect nothing. However, by early July,
there are always about 12-25 fruits hidden under leaves ripening somewhere
or other - very tasty - they will stay on the tree for about 3 weeks in a
ripe state. Three houses over from me there is some other variety of
apricot, in a lower, more protected spot. It blooms much later, is a
full-sized tree, and is covered by many hundreds of apricots which ripen in
early August. I am in Spokane, zone 5/6





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