Sprouting apricot pits is easy. You germinate apricots just like you germinate peach pits… and if you watch my video, you’ll be starting your own apricot trees from seed in no time.
Look at the beautiful apricot pit bursting into life!
That said, no matter how many times you do something, once you do it on film you start to worry if you did it right.
When I did my “How to Germinate Peaches (and Other Stone Fruit)” video back in July I hoped I would have some success, even though I’ve done this before and never had it fail:
After buying the fruit, doing the work to make a nice video and posting it to YouTube… doubts entered my mind.
Could the fruit I chose be sterile? Might the pits fail to germinate and just mold over instead? Should I have cracked the pits first and just taken out the kernels?
Will the universe conspire against me to make everything I do fall into weeping and ashes?
Apparently not:
Now I have no idea if I can get an apricot to grow in the tropics but, by golly, I’m going to give it a go. I know it will be fine for the first half-year until it needs a winter dormancy. Maybe I can build a big outdoor fridge! Sprouting apricot pits is just the start… now I actually need to grow the trees.
That said, if my seedling peaches are any indicator, we’re going to do fine with the tree part:
Apricots are one of my favorite dried fruit. I wish I’d tried this with apricot pits back in Florida or Tennessee where I’d have a better chance of getting fruit, but we’ll try tricking them into fruiting here by leaf-stripping during the dry season. It could happen, and if not: well, we pulled off a good demonstration on how to germinate apricots, at least! The other pits haven’t germinated yet but they can take a few months. I’ll bet we get a few more soon.
You can have greener thumbs by this weekend!
11 comments
Hi,
just wondering why you don’t use a branch to root? Growing fruit trees from pips is a very long proces, especially as the tree will need a couple of years longer to bear fruit, than if you grow them from a branch.
I live in Southern Spain, where the avocado pips from my compost tend to sprout by themselves. This works fine, if you graft them with a fruit bearing branch. Otherwise it can take up to 7 years until they bear fruit and often the quality is not as good as the ones that grew from a branch.
A cool period might be difficult. You might want to start with building some sort of roof thingy to keep the rain away, and maybe you could try to keep your sprouts in he fridge, packed in good winterpacking, as you would do when you would live in the North, and tried to protect your young trees from the cold.
I do that with seeds that don’t sprout without a period of cold, as it never freezes here. Works well.
So good luck with your abricots, love them too, hope you will grow some.
Juana
Thank you, Juana. There are a few reasons I grow fruit trees from seed.
For one, I prefer the genetic diversity of seed-grown trees and have had some interesting varieties pop up with my peach tree experiments I never would have found otherwise.
Another reason I really like to grow stone fruit from seed is that they’re really fast to produce. I got peaches in less than 2 years – from seed! I honestly couldn’t believe it. Some took as long as three, but the first few really cemented my growing from pits desire as they also outgrew and outperformed my grafted and named varieties I had purchased. The seedling vigor is amazing.
Also, there are no apricots I could take cuttings from here even if I wanted to, so I’m stuck on that front.
All the best,
David
Hi David, thanks for your reply.
That quick! Cool, now I want to try this too.
I realised you had no abricot tree around, already thought about sending one, but it would have been easier from somewhere else in roughly the same part of the earth.
Good luck,
Juana
Yep. I also start apples, mangoes, citrus and other trees from seed but the stone fruit are the most satisfying – SO FAST! Except for maybe tropical almond, they are amazing.
Also, if I get something I don’t like or which I feel is going too slowly, I will graft with another variety I like. Back home in Florida I have my own variety of peach that blooms over a long season so it doesn’t lose all its blooms to frost in the last-frost years. This was from a pit I planted off a commercial variety. If they had their way, this would have been a “bad” trait since they wouldn’t get a harvest all at once for picking and shipping. As a backyard tree, though, it’s better than all at once.
nicely done. I have 3 out of 8 peach/nectarine seeds that I germinated to plants that have been in the ground since May of last year and they’re doing well. Not sure of the variety so I have no way of knowing if they’re going to produce any fruit or not. I may have to try the leaf stripping technique..
That’s marvelous. Where do you live – and were they store-bought fruit or from a local source?
I’m in Jacksonville, FL. If I recall they were from a local source. Local being some part of Florida, but I’m not 100%. They’re going to need another couple years before they even have a chance of bearing fruit.
I’ve been told peaches are sensitive to day length more than chill hours and that may work in your favor, though, being so close to the equator, day length may not vary that much for you.
I’ve got several sandwich bags in the back fridge with locally grown plum and peach pits, as well as apples and other seeds from watching your previous video. I know my wife loves apricots, I’ll have to germinate some for her and see what we get. You videos, website and books have really helped me grow my own food, without going broke. The price of fruit trees, for example, is downright depressing. The best thing about this time of year, though, is that some of my favorite fruits are available locally and they have seeds that grow true to type.
Thank you. I think you’ll have great success. Some of them are really fast to produce.
Any tips for working with sprouts that have grown a little too much in the fridge? On advice of someone else, I put several apricot seeds in a plastic bag and damp paper towel, left them in the fridge. By the time I found them, they had ALL germinated and were starting to grow fast (sprouts 3-4″ long, lots of roots). I planted several in pots and have kept them well watered. But the sprouts so long and tender that they are drying up and shriveling… I have more in their fridge baggie, any tips on helping these ones through the delicate transition from fridge sprout to hardy potted seedling?
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