The fruit of an apricot tree, or apricot, is a unique and delicious fruit. It has a lot of useful elements: phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, provitamin A, many acids and important trace elements. To grow an apricot tree yourself and get a good harvest, you need to know about the right choice of seeds for growing and further care for the seedling.
What apricot kernels are suitable for planting?
As a starting material, the district fruit of the first crop is suitable, that is, one that is successfully grown in your area and stably tolerates all the natural and climatic conditions of your area. Not a district apricot may not give a good harvest or not at all take root.
Where to get a bone?
You buy local first ripe apricots from summer residents, specifying the variety and taste characteristics. Eat them with pleasure, but don’t throw out the bones. Do not forget to pay attention to the fact that the bone is easily separated from the pulp of the fetus - this is a sign that it is ready for future planting.
You also need to decide if you would like the stone to be sweet or, on the contrary, bitter. A seed with any taste characteristic is useful: both sweet and bitter stones contain a large amount of fatty acids, minerals and vitamins. At the same time, there is more vitamin B17 in the bitter bone.
Seed selection
Selected seeds of only ripe fruit are well washed under running water, dried and stored in a ventilated place with a low humidity indicator. It is better to collect a lot of seeds, since not all of them can ascend in the spring.
Landing time
The best time to plant is late autumn before the first serious frost, or mid-spring. If you decide to plant the bones closer to mid-autumn, then there is a high probability that the bones will be eaten by rodents.
Outdoor cultivation
Planting apricot seeds in a garden or garden is better than deciding to grow a tree at home, since this process will temper the seedling, and it will be able to withstand any bad weather in the future, while the home can not survive the first cold weather.
Landing place
The choice of a place for planting the future tree is not fundamental. It can be anything, because later you will have the opportunity to transplant the seedling to another place after it is strong enough.
Landing
Before the autumn landing, the bones are pre-selected. To do this, they are placed in water for about a day. Those that burst out are immediately eliminated, since they are empty inside, and nothing will come of them.
Everything that has passed the selection is placed in a pre-prepared trench 5-6 cm deep. Humus, straw, sand, chernozem are laid on the bottom of the trench, bones are laid next, then they are sprinkled with the same composition, and ground with ground.
Do not plant the bones too superficially, as in this case they can be pecked by birds. But landing too deep is not acceptable. The relatively average location hardens the seeds, leaving the shoots of the strongest representatives.
Spring planting, in contrast to the autumn, implies several nuances. Seeds undergo stratification, that is, long-term aging of seeds at a certain temperature for their further fruitful germination. The same process goes through the seeds planted in the autumn, only in a more natural way.
Around the end of January, the bones are placed in a box of wet sand, which is then lowered into the cellar or refrigerated until April. Storage temperature should always be + 2 ° C, and sand should always be wet.
Or at the beginning of March, the seeds can be soaked in water for three days, changing the water every day and avoiding souring. After the bones have been saturated with moisture, they are placed in moist sand, lowered into the cellar, and in April they are planted according to the same scheme as in autumn.
Seedling after seedling
In the spring, when the first leaves and stalk appear, future trees must be protected from birds, rodents, cats and other animals, making shelters from cropped plastic containers, which will serve as a fence for delicate seedlings.
They do not require complex care - watering once every two weeks (or more often depending on temperature) and loosening the earth around the stalk. Over the summer, the seedling is growing, and in the fall it will be possible to transplant it to another place.
It should be borne in mind that at least two seedlings must be left in the garden to ensure good pollination. They need to be planted at a distance of 3-4 meters from each other.
Transplanting a young seedling to a new place
The place for further transplantation can be any, but it is better that it is not too shady, so that the fruits are better poured. Dig a hole, pour a mixture of humus, chernozem, grass, tops and other organics to the bottom, powder the litter with earth. After that, spread the roots of the seedling and thoroughly fill the entire planting pit with earth.
In the first year at the beginning of spring, the tree is cut, removing dried branches and shoots. Further care consists in abundant watering in the summer every couple of weeks. The basal part is covered with sawdust or grass to avoid drying out. Five years after planting, the tree should give the first harvest.
Growing at home
The home process is not very different from the usual planting, so you already have the information that is necessary for a successful growing experience. However, there are several nuances that will be highlighted below.
Apricot ground
There are no specific conditions for the selection of soil. You can purchase both ordinary soil and peat. Before planting, the soil mixture must be well moistened with settled running or rain water.
Pot for planting
For the first time, an ordinary plastic cup will suffice, but as the seedling develops, it will need to be transplanted into a deep pot, since the root system of the apricot tree is quite long. The pot is better to choose from natural eco-friendly materials. A wooden barrel, clay or stone pot is well suited.
Planting Apricot Seeds
To plant, you need to stock up with the required number of plastic cups or special nurseries, which are sold in gardening stores. It is also necessary to stock up on drainage, which is located at the very bottom of the glass. A moistened soil mixture is placed on top of the drainage, into which the germinated seed is planted.
Sprouting
The bones for home cultivation also go through a period of stratification, which lasts about 100 days, and the same selection, which was described above. After the hardening period has passed, the sprouted planting material is planted in plastic cups with an opening at the bottom so that excess fluid can leak.
In this video, the gardener talks about growing an apricot tree at home:
Apricot Tree Care
Home-grown apricot trees need constant care. It is very important to feed, rid the tree of various pests, as well as diseases.
Diseases and Pests
Various diseases and pests can reduce the yield of any tree, including apricot. However, there are different types of diseases.
Diseases caused by viral or bacterial infections:
- Smallpox plum. Fruits and leaves are covered with brown spots and dents, or stripes. Apricots ripen very quickly, but lose their taste characteristics. If you notice smallpox on a nearby plum tree, know that it will certainly go to the apricot tree, and vice versa.
- Smallpox ring. Leaves change shape, shoots die off or grow poorly, branches die. Brown spots appear on the fruits. The tree may soon die.
- Viral wilt. At the same time, leaves and inflorescences appear, but the leaves are thickened, twisted and in yellow spots. The fruit itself acquires a brown color and loses taste characteristics. The tree may die in the future.
Diseases caused by fungal infections:
- Kleasterosporiosis. Holey spotting. It affects a tree in autumn and spring. Brown-violet spots appear on the leaves, which destroy the sheet, making it thinner, after which a through hole forms at the spot's place. Dark marks appear on the shoots, from which wood resin emerges.
- Moniliosis. It is manifested by burns and gray rot. Often appears during high spring humidity when flowering begins. A large percentage of yield loss. It is likely that the disease will reappear next year, as mold spores are highly resistant to natural factors and “drugs”.
Prevention and treatment:
- Cutting infected branches and shoots.
- Spraying the buds in spring before ripening and in the fall of leaves after falling Bordeaux liquid 4% for hole blotch and 3% for moniliosis.
Beware of eggs and larvae of such pests as aphids (deforms leaves), codling moth (its caterpillars settle inside the fruit, eat flesh, accelerating decay), fruit striped moth (caterpillars eat buds and shoots), weevil (spoils inflorescences, leaves, in the summer - fruit). Against pests, processing with a solution of laundry soap and insecticides is effective.
Fertilizer and fertilizing
It is best to feed the tree in autumn after the leaves fall, so that the soil can be enriched with useful nutrients and ready for spring.
The best way to feed fertilizer is with root dressing. As top dressing, wood ash, peat, sawdust with sand, eggshell are used. During the summer, young seedlings are useful to feed with nettle infusion mixed with manure.
Seed Apricot Transplant
An apricot seedling will require frequent transplanting: a young tree needs to be replanted once a year, grown up once every 4 years, and the diameter of the pot will increase every 10 centimeters. Keep in mind that a tree grown at home is very likely to die during the first frost if you decide to transplant it to the street.
Do I need to plant apricot?
You need to know that the seed contains the genetic information of many generations, as a result of which a tree with a similar crop can not always grow from planting materials collected from a tree with large and beautiful fruits.
If you are disappointed that it was not possible to grow a tree with certain characteristics, try to instill a more “successful” sample into it. However, in order to avoid this nuisance, it is necessary to plant a large number of seeds at a time in order to choose the best seedling in the future.
Important Tips
The whole process of growing is very exciting and entertaining. The main thing is not to forget about the timing of planting, monitor the temperature during stratification, take care of seedlings and mature trees, loosen the soil, whiten in autumn and spring, timely carry out apricot pruning and spraying. All preventive measures will help you keep the tree healthy and fruitful.