I really enjoyed the Tomcots i had this year. I have three trees, and some day i'm going to be drowning in them.

No Puget Gold? I'm wonder how they compare since i have a tree.

I had about half dozen Hunza. I'd rate them so so... The texture was fine, but they didn't size up much, considering we had a foot of rain the past 6 weeks.

Crazy how much rain we had, yet the fruit did not seem "watered" down at all. The Tomcots were borderline candy in my opinon.

Thanks fruitnut. Here is my report. The order is from most tasty on down. Many of these are white apricots because I am trying to find good ones in that group.

Tomcot - best overall, great flavor and no rot. It is susceptible to peach scab which for an organic grower such as myself is a problem - it gets pretty bad on some fruits and stunts them so they don't ripen properly. On my peaches I limited scab this year with a sulphur spray and I will try to do an earlier sulphur on the 'cots to limit their scab as well.

Canadan White Blenheim - #1 or #2 for flavor, a rich honeyed taste. But productivity has been very low (partly my own fault due to poor pruning practice). Fruitnut, the fact that we are both having production problems on this one raises the overall concern level of this. The fruits got a similar level of peach scab as did the Tomcot, but they are softer so I expect it will be worse overall in terms of scab/rots/splitting. I only had a couple fruits this year so its hard to conclude too much from that.

Zard - They taste very similar to CWB. The fruits got a lot of catfacing on them or other damage so they may not be a good one for my climate.

Afghanistan - this is another white apricot. It is more meaty than CWB with a more delicate-suger flavor as opposed to honeyed. This guy got only minor scab, the fruits look very nice. Its looking like a real winner. First year of harvest for it.

Shekar Pareh (has many other spelllings) - I have decided this guy is in fact a plumcot, it has many plum-like features including a different leaf shape, different growth habit (very branching/twiggy), different stem (plum type), different texture (meaty like a plum), clingstone like plums, etc. The thing I like the most is it seems to be completely immune to peach scab, they look like perfect fruits on the tree. They are still ripening but from the previous year they are more sour but otherwise similar to Afghanistan in flavor. Overall this guy is not up to Tomcot/CWB in flavor but it compensates with its unique "true plumcot" experience and beautiful looks.

Puget Gold - this is milder in flavor than Tomcot, still a nice apricot. It gets a lot of scab but otherwise is an easy and reliable tree.

Jerseycot - early harvest right after Tomcot. This was my first year for them and about half of the fruits split. The flavor was similar to Puget Gold, mild and good. Besides the early ripening however Puget Gold looks to be better since it didn't split at all. Jerseycot also got plenty of scab so no relief there.

Harglow - not quite ripe yet but not sweet at all and very blah taste. Even though they are not quite ripe yet this year, they were completely blah last year as well.

I got a few suboptimal fruits from a few varieties, not enough to make a real verdict on. But here is a first impression:

Peche de Nancy - these guys the curculio just loved for some reason, and many split or rotted later as well. So I only ended up with one fruit; it was excellent however.

Noori - not ripe yet but all fruits split; time to pull this one out (has blown it for several years now).

Gheissi of Damavand - nice taste but splitting like crazy.

Apex plumcot - mealy, blah.

Mirsanjeli Late - tasted quite good but only one fruit this year.

Hunza type - only one fruit which tasted good.

Overall, Tomcot, Shekar Pareh, and Afghanistan are looking like winners and Puget Gold is an almost-winner. Shekar Pareh proved a difficult tree to prune, it needs a lot of shoot thinning during the growing season, so it may not be good for inexperienced growers. Or maybe it had something to do with my rootstock or growing conditions. All of these four had a good load of fruit except Afghanistan, but its a newer tree and for its age it did well so I am optimistic on its yield.

Scott

Scott: Thank you for a great report. I hope more people will chime in.

Canadian White Blenheim is very vigorous for me but it didn't bloom much and what did bloom didn't set well. I'll probably keep some and try it again.

I'm happy with the early apricots I've got and don't plan to look at more any time soon unless you find something better than Tomcot.

I'm pleased that we seem to have some agreement!!

Last year I thought the Cot-N-Candy was outstanding. For some reason it wasn't nearly as good this year. That happens. I've had years when Tomcot and Robada weren't great either.

On the positive side CNC does set very heavily. Almost every bloom turns into a fruit. On the downside the fruit is very small even with a pretty good thinning. If you don't thin the fruit will be cherry or small plum size.

Another CNC trait that showed up this year is that the bottom spurs were all fruit and no leaves. This is somewhat a trait of all apricots. But CNC seems very bad this way. So you are left with lots of barren spurs on the bottom of limbs. There is no way to get production back down there other than cut off the whole limb and hope it sprouts back.

I'm wondering if anyone else is seeing this?

Fruitnut, I am under the impression that Robada, Cot-n-candy, and Flavorella are hard to grow in midwest/south/east climates so I am not trying them, but if you or anyone has heard otherwise please chime in!

One thing I wanted to add was about the Hunza 'cots. Are you guys growing the "Hunza" sold by Raintree? There are quite a few Hunza type cots in the ARS collection. The one that I got a fruit from this year was Paiwand, DPRU 1438 at ARS. It was small but with good flavor so it definitely sounds different than the one you had fruitnut. I picked it too early so I don't know how good it would have ended up.

Scott

Mine is from Raintree. I thought they were good. The tree is kind of slow growing (compared to the Tomcots) and upright.

Hunza
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Where do you get "Afghanistan"?

Scott:

My impression is that Robada hasn't been tested much. Certainly not as much as Tomcot. I think it would be worth a try outdoors wherever Tomcot does well. It's maybe 10 days later than Tomcot. That means extra pest pressure. But it can be sensational.

Flavorella is a definite no. Blooms way too early. Needs another early blooming apricot like Gold Kist for pollination. Outdoors it's going to get blown off the tree before fully ripe.

Cot-N-Candy I have no idea how it would do. But you've tried all the other white fleshed cots so why not this one. Maybe you've heard that it doesn't do well. But I don't think it's been out long enough for much info.

Tasty Rich might be worth trying because of very early maturity. One of the east coast nurseries was selling it and Honey Rich. I like Tasty Rich because it is my earliest apricot and first fruit of the summer. It does bloom early which for me is part of the reason it matures early. It is what is now pollinating my Flavorella. But I need something a few days earlier bloom and I think Gold Kist is the ticket there.

Early Golden has fine looking red blushed orbs dry but sweet and good.

Sugar Pearls dropped its flowers in its third season. I have over ten grafts on this tree, many are now over 5'growth and next season should produce many different fruits; Trevatt, CWB, Tomcot, Red Sweet, Sparks Mammoth, Hoyt Montrose, Early Montgamet, Shaa-kar Pareh, Nugget, Flavor Delight, Peche de Nancy, Harcot, Harglow.

The Spring Satin plumcots were much sweeter due to the PC thinning many fruits.

Mesch Mesch Amrah is grafted 2 years ago into a plum tree but the flowers dropped so maybe next year. MMA is a plumcot pollinated by another plum. The leaves are shaped like an Apricots.

Apex plumcot is grafted this season into a pluot tree. A Luther Burbank creation said to be "rich and aromatic" in Plums of North America.

I have three seedling Apricots growing in the back orchard.
I'd like to try another dozen or two good ones. Maybe fly out to CRFG next winter.

Frank, I got my Afghanistan from Bob Purvis. I think his email is purvisrc@msn.com. I was surprised that apricot tasted as good as it did, I hadn't heard great things about its taste. Bob is the NAFEX apricot chair and he runs a small nursery (or at least he used to last I heard). Afghanistan has been tried by several NAFEX members all over the US and it seems quite adaptable.

Fruitnut, there was a discussion here about cot-n-candy pollination problems, that is what got me concerned. If people in California are having pollination problems I don't see how it would work here. I think the California heritage of Robada scared me off, but maybe its worth a go. I have found your average California 'cot does horribly here, the plums do bad, and the peaches generally do fine. Go figure.

Ace, Re: Apex, I'm not sure I got the right one. My source was CRFG. That one is garbage so if that is your source you have a dud. There was a recent poster on the cloudforest forum who was saying his "Apex" wasn't even worth eating, he threw 'em away.

Scott

Scott,

You mentioned Jerseycot ripened after Tomcot. My Jerseycot ripened quite a bit before Tomcot.

Perhaps the difference is with the rootstock. Also the Tomcot was a pretty small tree (only produced about 10 cots). Maybe that had something to do with it. Sometimes young trees don't follow the predicted ripening schedule.

Yesterday, I ended up pulling up, or cutting down my six apricots. The apricots I had just weren't reliable here. Most of them don't produce fruit any earlier in the season than peaches, so there's no advantage for me on that one. Additionally, no one in the family is very excited about the taste of the fruit (including me). They just sit there on the table (Right now there is 4 or 5 Harlaynes sitting there. They are OK, about the same as Harglows.) So I thought I'd just replace them with peaches. Of course I'm not trying to convince anyone else to rip out their apricots, just explaining why I did. Also took out 4 Jap. plums. Same story.

Incidentally, two of the apricots died anyway. It's the cycle I've seen so many times, huge prolonged rains followed by scorching heat. It fries the trees. The trees just didn't have good enough drainage.

I know my Tomcot (which came from Raintree) are on Lovell... I'm thinking the Hunza in on Citation (?) and have no idea what they put the Puget Gold on (small tree so far).

Scott:

No apricot I've tried sets half as good as Cot-N-Candy. It seems like every bloom becomes a fruit but of course that's an exaggeration. I haven't heard anything about poor fruit set.

Robada is the best apricot I've ever eaten. But that deserves a little detailed comment. The best of the Robada, maybe 10%, have been the best I've ever eaten. Sometimes it's not great but sometimes Tomcot isn't great either.

One of the most consistent apricots has been Tasty Rich. Always good to very good but not great. Most of the others have been up and down to some extent.

Hmm, I think I mixed it up then. I did hear something really negative about cot-n-candy for me though. Maybe it was a very early blossom time.

Olpea, I have the opposite of you, a young Jerseycot and an old Tomcot, and I expect that explains the difference in our ripening dates. Thats too bad the apricots didn't work out, but you gotta move on. I don't give my trees much leeway anymore, if I'm tasting the fruit and its all bad out comes the saw from my holster and the tree is gone in 5 minutes. If it is topworkable it may survive until the next spring.

Scott

Scott-

So instead of orange, the "Afghanistan" has a white flesh, like a white fleshed peach? That is just nuts.

Fruitnut,

Turkey sounds like a good one to try in your green house.

Candycots
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/dining/18apricot.html?_r=1

Here is a link that might be useful: Turkey

Alfred has tiny fruit, is prone to scab, but has good flavor and seems to be relatively hardy here in southeastern NY. My Early Blush had a few fruit and it is the most promising new variety I've tried because it's tasty and extremely early. Hargrand is probably the best performer I've tried here year after year. The size is outstanding, flavor good and the trees tend to live for a while.

I've noticed that same varieties can be dry at one site and juicy at another and I'm not sure what causes the difference.

Up here apricots are very fragile and seem very susceptible to cambium kill from hard early spring frosts.

I ordered a Tomcot last winter from a small N. CA nursery that confirmed the order and never sent the tree. I wish Adams would grow it so I could get a quantity discount.

I have Turkey but its new. Based on my experience with your average white 'cot in my climate I don't have high hopes, but of course I have to try.

Hman, I have also heard good things about Early Blush and am thinking of trying that one. If I can find room.

Scott

I see that Adams County Nursery carries Early Blush. They show it being about a week earlier than Tasty Rich. That is very early, 2-3 weeks before Tomcot based on my experience. Adams doesn't show Tomcot and apparently don't sell it. Could we all be wrong?

Does anyone have experience with both Early Blush and Tomcot as to relative maturity? I could find room for another cot that early if it's good.

Adams has a very nice maturity chart that incorporates both Zaiger and East coast varieties. They seem to be the top nursery in the east for trying all types of stuff. Would be nice if more of those people would post here.

Early Blush is the earliest maturing fruit on their chart. I'll repeat my question: anyone have any experience as to relative maturity of Tomcot and Early Blush?

Is their anyone still growing any of these ??? thanks Joe