Apricots-Growing and Processing

This can be pretty short and sweet: I've largely failed with apricots here.  I planted a semi-dwarf (allegedly) Goldcot apricot tree in early 2000, the same time I planted the two dwarf peach trees that have performed well.  In that entire time, I've gotten this, plus maybe one or two per year on average:

This was the harvest in 2011; it was a couple of pounds at the most (I didn't weigh it).  Other than this one year, I've had a lot of fruit set most of the time; they have grown to a size ranging from that of a blueberry to the size of the first joint of my thumb (sometimes developing the beginnings of a red blush), then while still green they fall off.

It doesn't seem to be a pollination issue: the tree is supposed to be self-fertile and most years the developing apricots grow more than I'd expect if they were infertile.  I've seen peaches that don't get pollinated, and they stay tiny.

It's also not a problem with late frosts.  North GA has plenty of those.  Every year I hold my breath once the blueberries and peaches bloom, and in a few years--like this one--all or most of the crop is wiped out.  That doesn't normally happen with the apricots (or peaches or blueberries), though.

It is undeniably an attractive tree.  There are plenty of flowering "fruit" trees that produce essentially no fruit (e.g., Yoshino cherry, Bradford pear), so it has some value as an ornamental.  That is the one thing that has saved it.

Plus, each year it holds forth the promise of a decent harvest.  Back in 2011, I thought that was the start of something good.  The next year: nothing...and nothing in 2013 or 2014, either.

I give the apricot the same care as I give the peaches: fungicide before, during, and after bloom, then Surround.  All to no avail.  I've seen brown rot on an apricot once or twice.  Does this mean it is less susceptible?  Not necessarily: what this means is that for one or two apricots in a typical year that get to the point that they turn orange, I've seen one or two with brown rot over the whole time I have had it.

Btw, I know the picture at the right suggests poor pruning for fruit production--there are too many upright branches.  However, the tree itself is very airy and the foliage isn't dense at all.

Ah, well.  I don't know that I'm going to try apricots again.  Early bloom / late frost is what allegedly dooms them most often, but there are other problems--and it might just be that this one tree is genetically flawed.  However, it's worth noting that as far as I know, there is no commercial apricot production here.  There are plenty of peach orchards (the big ones are down around Macon, but there are also smaller ones in north GA).

I do like apricots, however.  I buy them in the store--the season is pretty short--and can them.  I typically cut them into quarters, dip them in an ascorbic acid solution to deter browning, and put them into jars with a fairly light syrup (last time I used a 1:3 mixture of sugar/water; I think I have also used 1:2).  See:

Syrups for Canning (NCHFP)

So my mix is somewhere between light and medium...the NCHFP site suggests using heavy for apricots but I like the lighter preparation (though one person I offered some to recently thought they were too sour, so maybe my tastes are a little weird).

There's nothing special about canning apricots, with one caveat: The BBB says something like 2-2.5 lb. per quart jar, and the NCHFP splits the difference and says 2.25 lb. per quart.  I don't know how to do that.  I raw pack (almost always, unless doing something like preserves that require hot pack), but even so, the last time I did this, I cut up about 14 lb. and got 9 quarts.  I packed the jars pretty tightly, fitting the apricots in the jars together carefully.  I used 9 quarts of water (with 3 of sugar) as the syrup, so used about 1 cup per quart.  As you can see, my jars are decently filled, even after processing.  I'm not going to worry about it, but this happens a lot--I often am not able to get as much into jars as expected.

Other ways to process apricots include preserves (which I've never done) and dehydrating (which I tried once and didn't like).  So I just can them.