Nice mrclint.This one is of a Puget Gold Apricot with mostly Shiro and a little Santa Rosa Plum in the bottom right.
I think your warm weather is at least a month ahead of where I'm at.I'm kind of surprised that your Apricot is still blooming.The PG flowers are pretty much spent.Unless your photo was taken earlier in the year. Brady

The photo was taken this week. 'Royal' did a staggered bloom of sorts, seemed like it waited a little for our rain to come and then picked the bloom back up again afterwards. Everything is going bonkers setting fruit right now.

Bradybb, your trees look great. Thanks for sharing!

Anybody else growing 'Royal', aka 'Royal Blenheim'? It's the only apricot that I care for enough to grow.

Here is a link that might be useful: Looking for the Last Great Apricot

I am growing one that has been in the ground for about three years. Going on it's fourth growing season. It suffers from lack of chill every year. I get maybe 20 fruit a year.

Usually I get around 300 chill hours and it has a staggered bloom for about a month and then starts to leaf out.

This year I had roughly 150 chill hours and it is acting bizarre. It has been blooming for about a month and a half. The majority of the flower buds have not opened. No sign of leafing out and some of the fruit is quickly reaching a mature size.

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econ0003, I don't know exactly what your tree is doing, but assume as you do that low chill is the cause. Royal is the one tree that I grow that is marginal for a low chill area.

There are much better apricot for my greenhouse. I think Blenheim may need a milder climate than mine. It was nothing special near Fresno and suffered from pit burn. Better than Patterson but anything qualifies on that count.

fruitnut, thanks for weighing in. I know you are a bigger apricot fan than I am. Most apricots that I've tasted have a texture that I'm not too fond of. A dead ripe Royal is a remarkable piece of fruit here. One thing about Royal is that they can have some green on the shoulders and still be dead ripe.

Setting a fair amount of fruit. Got some thinning to do soon:

Fruits no good without leaves. My apricots lacking chilling didn't even bloom but they did leaf out.

Me also Fruitnut. I have Tomcot, Katy & Blenheim. With the 83 chill hours I got this year the cot trees still look like it's winter. No leaves, no flowers, no fruit (They are starting to break, I can see little green leave tips).Cot - n - Candy is the only Apricotish tree that set some fruit (Maybe 50 or so fruits). Hopefully next year will be better.

Mr. Clint do you have Cot - N - Candy?

My Blenheim is finally starting to push some leaves out after that last rain. The flower buds on my cot-n-candy are swelling. No luck so far with flavor delight. Just a bare tree with a single leaf bud breaking out.

"Fruits no good without leaves."
The tree will die without leaves! :)

I wouldn't read too much into a 640x480 snapshot of a section of the tree. You can see the tree leafing out, blooming and setting fruit in the first picture. That said, I get very heavy pollinator traffic with all the citrus, flowering herbs, berries and such, that I more often than not see fruitset ahead of leafing out. There may be other environmental factors at play as well. 'Babcock' takes this behavior to new levels but puts out incredible fruit every year. Be that as it may, this behavior makes the first thinning pass a lot easier.

I've read a lot of good things about 'Cot-N-Candy' aprium. It's in that June-July window where almost everything is great, and I'm already overloaded. Do share pictures if you can.

My fruit trees are not looking well too, due to lack of chill I guess. Only a few flowers even though the buds are not dropped yet. But Minnie Royal/Royal Lee cherry and pomegranate are doing great. The grape vine is also doing well.

My apricots have done very poorly with this year's insufficient chill (185 hrs). Even the best low chill variety, Joe's Italian, is messed up. Royal/ Blenheim has some fruit set, Flavor Delight aprium, nothing. Maybe Cot-N-Candy would be better. Gave up on Flavorella plumcot a few years ago after getting 3 fruit per year for several years in a row.

Brian

Royal is still doing fine here. The fruitset is holding well. I haven't started thinning in earnest yet. We do have rain forecast-ed, so hopefully it won't cause any problems. The tree is leafing out quickly, here's a snapshot as of a few minutes ago:

We have a Gold Kist apricot and it is loaded with fruit. Tons and tons, it is about 4 years old now. We keep thinning and more fruit seems to appear.

I have a lot of new trees, so I am not counting those, but I think only one very old plum tree is the only one that did not flower and set a lot of fruit-guessing due to lack of chill. This is the first tree that has ripe fruit every season and think it just got hot before it even had a chance to finish dropping leaves. Next year.

I'm not familiar with Gold Kist, does the taste/texture compare to Royal? The DWN site does mention Gold Kist as "very good quality. Heavy bearing."

I can only compare with our regular and very old Blenheim, comparing the two, Gold Kist beats out the bland Blenheim. But the Gold Kist has a better location. It also puts out many many many times more fruit than the Blenheim ever did.

Might be something for you to try at the farmers market in a couple of months and see what you like.

Come May I'm knee deep in peaches, but I will look for Gold Kist at the Farmer's Markets.