Apricot - Prunus armeniacum - Growing Apricots - How to prune Apricot Tree

This time of year, all the cherry trees are starting to pop into bloom and the same genus applies to Apricots. Apricots belong to the same genus that includes cherries and plums, Prunus, a very large group of plants. These are not selected for the beauty of their flowers but for the wonderful flavor and production of the fruit. They do have a wonderful flowers though, I love the flowers of of the apricots. They're slightly fragrant, are five petaled with multiples of five of all the stamens and other flower parts which are indicative of its familial heritage in the rose family, Rosaceae. It shares that family with apples, pears and many other what we call pomme fruits.

You want to plant apricots where they are protected from an early spring warm up. You want to suppress the time of bloom to a point where, when they're in bloom you won't have a killing frost. So you don't want to plant this in a protected spot on the south side of a wall or a building, you wan to put it where there's lots of air drainage through it so that if it does frost, the frost will sink to the bottom land nearby. You also want that good air drainage because this plant shares the traits with many of its familial cousins that it's subject to fungal problems and by having good air movement through and around the plant, you can lessen a lot of those problems. We also went good soil drainage. Average garden soil is good for most fruit trees, it doesn't have to be real rich and in fact it should not be real rich. You don't want to fertilize fruit trees with lots of nitrogen, you'd rather have a good, well drained garden soil. You definitely want full sun for apricot trees.

Apricots flower in mid to late April and then produce the ripe fruit from about fourth of July to the middle of that month. The fruit ripens pretty much all at once so it's best to have your canning equipment ready for apricot preserves, or have an apricot party. You can also use it to flavor wine and cordials, but it's best eaten fresh. Apricots in our climate here in Connecticut are a little bit of a short lived plant. We planted this one as a bare rooted whip and got, a small handful of apricots the second the second year. The third year we had enough to fill my hat or maybe two, and then the fourth year we had almost a bushel.

There are a number of disease and insect pests to worry about with apricot trees and peaches and plums unless you have an active spraying program. We don't spray here, we prefer to use good cultural practices. Good cultural practices for apricots include these: Clean up in the fall around the plant, get all the leaves and debris from the apricot trees or other fruit trees. Pick that all up and get it out , remove it from the site. When pruning apricot trees, you want to prune in such a way as to provide as much sunlight penetrating the canopy and hitting the trunk and the branches as possible. This will help dry out the apricot tree and helps prevent the fungal problems. It's also true that horizontally placed branches tend to flower more than branches that ascend steeply and therefore bears more fruit. Apricots may be a short lived tree maybe ten or twelve years so you'll get eight, maybe nine years or so of fruit production out of out them in our climate here in Connecticut, but it's totally worth it. The taste of fresh, hand picked, tree ripened apricots is something you won't forget. It's like biting into sunlight!

Apricot - Prunus Armeniacum

#apricots

[EnginAtik]

A great taste and texture, and a great source of vitamin A.

[bstylesk]

Knowing the characteristic of these trees will let me place them in my backyard in the proper place this is awesome I like these tips once you plant a tree it is there

[ryanbryant]

Apricots are some beautiful and tasty fruit.

[caffeineaddict]

Thanks very much for such a great video.  I am definitely going to organise a couple of apricot trees in our garden.

[ryanbryant]

Apricots are some tasty fruit and beautiful that strengthen the body's healing and embellishing.

[downbntout]

'Biting into sunlight.'  Well said!Here in Eastern WA we get some low temps, we're abt as far north maybe?  but my tree is about 40 years old. By the look of it, I'll have abt nine bushels. Thanks, I'll remember your phrase when I eat this year's first.

[cloudforest]

Thank you good sir. That was quite helpful

[ether]

We are also located in New Haven, CT. I have a question, my parents planted an apricot tree and now it seems to be growing like a bush. They really didn't know how to care or prune them so now I am taking up the task, leading to my question, do you have any idea on whether or not I should prune it now around this time? What season or months are the best to prune the tree? I am thinking of pruning back at least 25-30% of the tree. Thanks for any advice!

[deelightedu]

Last year i had tons of Apricots. This year no fruit and 50 shoots off the roots came up . What is going on???

[downbntout]

I like to pull them open, take out the pit, and freeze 'em on a tray for an hour. Then they go into gallon bags and into the deep freeze, and later into my oatmeal.

[baif]

I just bought an Apricot tree but not sure what type
It is 3 feet high in a plastic tub with 9 small Apricots on it.
When should I plant it into the ground?
I live in Cyprus 300m asl also could plant it in my other garden but is 900m asl and gets cold in the winter.
I have cherry and plums doing well but peaches don't seam to like the mountains.
i enjoyed your video.

[vchunster]

Not sure if you are still monitoring comments anymore? I have a 10 year old Apricot tree and its grown pretty tall over 20 feet tall. I have neglected it the past few years so I never suppressed the height of the tree. This year we actually got a decent crop but the neighborhood squirrels raided my tree overnight and pretty much gorge themselves on the green fruit a month ago. So they left us with 6 apricots. This year I want to prune and reduce the height of the tree down to 10 to 12 feet? Is that too much?

[MrVenturadog]

I have a Royal Apricot, over 15 years old produces still. In zone 8b, it has more blooms in years with stronger winter frost. Birds are my biggest problem.

[Mazurkahay]

It was the Romans who brought prunus Armeniacum from Armenia 2 millennia ago. Today it is known as apricot.