Flavor Delight is a very early bloomer. Most years the frost is probably going to thin 100%. Sorry, that's just the way it is in most places. Covering a few blooms won't help. It's the degree and duration of a freeze that determines the damage not frost on the fruit. The tree won't learn to bloom later. It's all about chilling and the temperatures that follow.

If you get a freeze without a lot of wind you might try covering the tree with a frost blanket. Any covering with a heat source inside can help.

I had a flavor delight aprium, it reached 7 feet tall, nice round tree, had a tree-full of amazingly delicious fruit. About 4 years old. Then the next year, it bloomed early, full bloom, we had a hard frost, and it killed the whole tree dead, all the way to the graft. Bummer. Super bummer. It's OK to freeze much colder when fully dormant, but somehow a good frost on the blooming tree was fatal. I had the same thing happen to a Puget Sound apricot a couple of years before.

Now I have a Chinese Mormon apricot, although I keep my fingers crossed. This year the blooms have been really early. I hope more don't get killed. My peaches bloom early too, but so far they've survived. Might be because they are genetic dwarfs and very easy to cover in a freezing spell.

The blanket idea might help.

Fruitnut gave you the hard truth. If your last average frost is truly April 15th (although that sounds awful late for GA) you will rarely (and probably never) get anything that blooms this early.

I've tried covering blooms, but generally colder weather bring north winds that make a kite out of your frost blanket.

Open blooms and fruit set are the most susceptible to frost kill. They can take some light frosts, with increasing damage at lower (and longer) temperatures. At about 25F, it's curtains.

Garedneck:

Flavor Delight aprium is a poor variety choice for your location. It does blossom early, as do many apricots and plums, but it is also subject to later brown rots in your type of climate, which is not much different from mine.

Take out that aprium and replace it with a Tomcot apricot, which is a better fruit in nearly every respect. I have grown both, side by side. The Tomcot, which has a long blossoming period and ripens earlier than aprium, sets a crop every year, some large and some smaller, depending on late frosts, but it always sets and holds something which is more than I can say for aprium. I removed that unfortunate aprium. It did produce a few fruits, but they were nearly identical to apricots in appearance and flavor, and not as good as Tomcot.

Aprium might be ok for the west coast, but I would not plant another if it were a gift.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Looks like the fruit lords and this forum have been good to me as my two year old dwarf Spring Satin Plumcot is loaded with delicious fruit! You can see the three styles of "protection" ( footies, cotton bag and green oragoma (sp) bags) being used in an experiment to learn about how well they keep bidrs/squirrels away and how long they take to apply and how many fruit are ruined in the process! The mockingbirds started feeding on them so I put out the bags. Right now many still have yellow flesh inside and are sweet/sour, but a few are ripening (red flesh) and are out-of-this-world sweet like a bing cherry!

My flavor delight aprium just set a dozen fruit and estimate they will be ripe within 30 days. The stark bros plum and apricot that came with the order are loaded and will probably be ready to eat within 30 days as well.

Your help and a little luck have been invaluable. Thank you.

{{gwi:75094}}

Wow. Are you kidding? Atlanta is too cold for fruit trees?

I use the large size Christmas lights in my trees when they are in bloom. They only give a couple of degrees of protection, but in the spring, that's usually enough. My flowers can usually survive down to about 25 degrees with the lights. 29 is about their limit without help.

I've got the lights on a thermostat so I don't have to pay for the electricity until the temps get down to 40 degrees.

2 solid weeks of low 20's got my apricots, except for a couple of dozen right above the lights.

redneck, My Apricots bloomed in late March, last frost avg is April 15th and the actual last frost was the 7th. The Apricots set well this season and are sizing up. All my Apricot grafts took except one, Trevatt, about 11 new varieties on one tree. The grafts are going gangbusters. How did your grafts do.

wow,good looking plumcots!I wish I could grow them here in South Dakota.I was thinking of trying some in pots and storing them in the garage for the winter.Has anyone tried this with plumcots or apriums?

tylaw,
Spring Satin Plumcot is hardy to zone 5. They can can be ordered from Stark till June 6.

Here is a link that might be useful: Spring Satin Plumcot

ace,

the apricot graft is now 6" long.
the cherry graft started leafing out for two weeks and then died.
the peach/pear grafts never took.
I used a sharp razor blade to cut scions, lined up cambiums, grafting film, grafting tape and cleft grafts. Grafting is easier said than done!

redneck, my SS Plumcots are still green but are growing fast now. Good that you got an Apricot to take. Prune competing branches on the same branch. You'll see more growth on the new scion. We'll exchange scions again next season.