Apricot Harvest
The 4th of July weekend is typically the time of year Blenheim apricots are at their peak of ripeness in our area. This year, my 8 year old Blenheim apricot tree had 200-300 apricots, which is an enormous amount of fruit compared to prior years. Last Monday, my mom and I spent the holiday picking the apricots and making apricot jam. Every year, I like to try making something new with apricots. This year, I decided to make apricot/orange conserve in addition to apricot jam. We made it by adding 2 cups of orange juice to an apricot jam recipe using oranges from my valencia orange bush. The apricot/orange conserve turned out to be especially good.
These pictures show my apricot tree a few days before we harvested the fruit. Fresh apricots are one of the things I look forward to with anticipation every summer. Like other types of stone fruits, they are in season for such a short time, but the flavor of home grown tree-ripened apricots makes them worth waiting for.
The bird netting I wrapped around the tree in mid-June kept the birds as well as the squirrels from harvesting the fruit before we did. Putting the netting on and taking the netting off is the most difficult part of growing and harvesting apricots in our yard. To make the process of netting the tree more manageable, I prune the tree heavily in the winter and once more in June just before putting the netting on to keep the tree about 10 feet tall. But besides the trouble of netting the tree, growing apricots is easy, at least in our climate. I fertilize the tree about once a year with all-purpose fertilizer and water it with an automatic drip system everyday in the summertime.
July 11 2010 09:49 pm | Apricots
Laura Wiley on 29 Jul 2010 at 9:12 pm #
Hi Steve–I just found your blog. It’s really neat, with beautiful photos! I’m in Castro Valley and we have a gravenstein tree. The apples on the tree are always green, while the ones that fall are bruised and past their prime. This year I picked a few unripe apples and they are still green (a week or so later). Do you know if they will ripen off the tree?
Steve on 30 Jul 2010 at 11:08 am #
I don’t think that they will ripen more off the tree. My mom has had a Gravenstein apple tree for decades. It’s one of her favorite trees. Gravenstein is very prone to pre-harvest fruit drop. My mom has always used those early falling apples. She just cuts out the bruised parts of the fallen apples. She mainly uses her Gravensteins in apple sauce and pies. The season for Gravensteins is late July through mid August. Some of her Gravensteins that are on the top of the tree and get the most sun turn yellow with some red streaks. Otherwise, most of her Gravensteins are green even by mid-August, but they are still very edible. I think that your apples are ripe and ready to eat by early August even though they are green. Gravenstein apples are supposed to be tart, so don’t expect them to sweeten up much. If you want a redder tart apple, consider planting Red Gravenstein.