2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
The cultivated apricot, called "Common apricot", is an extraordinary plant. Gardeners highly appreciate it for its amazingly beautiful spring bloom. And its bright orange juicy fruits will easily turn any person indifferent to fruits into a grateful admirer. There is a sadness in my heart that in our harsh Siberian lands it is practically impossible to grow an apricot in your garden
Longevity fruits
The most delicious and healing fruits grow on the mountain slopes where the Hunza tribe lives (on the border of India and Pakistan). Eyewitnesses say that amber fruits, overflowing with fragrant juice, begin to ooze healing nectar on the tree branches. Fresh apricots in summer and dried apricots with apricots in winter, and wheat cakes are the main diet of the tribe. Some believe that such food is part of their fabulous longevity. It is like trees that live for 100 years transmit their strength through fragrant and juicy fruits to humans. The average life expectancy of the people of the Hunza tribe is estimated at 120 years.
The atmosphere of friendliness, calmness, optimism, humor and hospitality prevailing in the tribe is especially captivating. The tribe can easily do without prisons and police, because with such an attitude towards each other, there are no crimes. People living for 160 years are not at all like our decrepit sixty-year-olds and do not suffer from dementia.
Probably, in these rave reviews, not everything is 100% true. Some modern tourists who have visited those sky-high places are trying to refute a lot. But a person so wants to believe that there are places on Earth where a fairy tale becomes a reality.
Similar apricots had to be tried in childhood by our little girl with the nickname "Caty _L". It happened in Rostov-on-Don, once in her life, but she remembered for the rest of her life a fragrant and vivid episode (See the interview here: https://www.asienda.ru/eto-interesno/nashi-intervyu-znakomimsya -caty-l /).
Common or cultivated apricot
Common apricot (Armeniaca vulgaris) or cultivated has many varieties, which differ from each other in the size of the fruits, the variety of their forms and different ripening periods.
The strong trunk of the tree, covered with blackish-brown bark, proudly holds its rounded crown, formed by branches unevenly located on the trunk. Green glossy leaves hold on to branches with long thin petioles. The shape of the leaves is from cordate to elongated-oval with a pointed tip. At the top of the tree, the leaves have a jagged edge.
In early spring, when the leaves are still hiding in swollen buds, pink or white flowers bloom on the bare branches. They are either bold single, or stray into friendly bundles.
The fine-fibred pulp of an orange-yellow velvety fruit, ripened on a tree, called "drupe" melts in the mouth with a sweet-juicy aroma. The tree gives fruit to gardeners in June-July. In a ripe fruit, the pulp is easily separated from the seed-stone, not like we, Siberians, who buy fruits brought from warm edges, taken from a tree unripe.
Growing
Those who are lucky with the warm climate choose sunny places for the apricot, protected from the cold wind that can damage the early blooming flowers.
Soils need well aerated, without moisture stagnation. Watering is required only for young seedlings during the dry season. Mature trees, which have a powerful root that goes deep into the ground, take care of providing the plant with moisture on their own.
Apricot is a very vulnerable plant that does not tolerate heavy pruning. Therefore, it is necessary to remove only damaged or dry branches, and thin out last year's ones, trying not to touch short branches with growth and flower buds, thanks to which flowering occurs in the first place.
In principle, apricot trees tolerate frosts down to minus 30 degrees. But this is only when such frosts are short-lived, and not the prolonged Siberian cold. The tree can survive frost, but it is also influenced by a number of seasonal influences, which together do not allow the apricot to survive and give fruit. Although breeders continue to work on breeding varieties that can please the northerners with fruits. There are many points, taking into account which, you can grow a fruiting apricot in a long winter.
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