Apricots flowering at Sol Feliz

Our apricot trees started flowering recently.  We inherited a wonderful apricot from my grandparents and were able to graft it to make two more trees (we had three, but one of them died.)  We got another apricot from Tooley’s Trees several years ago and that is the one you see flowering in the picture above.  The trees that have a historical connection to this land seem to be in a more immature stage of flowering, which might indicate more adaptation to the site.

Hopefully we get some apricots this year, it does not seem likely as the nighttime lows consistently reach below freezing.  We have ideas of creating structures on the south side of our trees to keep it shaded, covering the trees when they are flowering with some kind of shade cloth or agricultural fabric to protect the flowers (this could risk breaking the branches), and on the newer trees, we buried a large (about 100 lbs) rock under the root ball in hopes of creating an underground thermal mass that might delay flowering.  This is a Permaculture technique I learned, one that takes into account that rocks take longer to warm up in the spring than soil so that the tree is fooled into sensing the spring is colder than it really is.  As our young trees get older, we may be able to confirm that this technique works…