FN,

I am envy you. My Chinese sweet pit and Sugar Pearls are only marble in size. I hope those rootstocks re-sprout for you.

Tony

Tony:

My fourth leaf Sugar Pearls was loaded with fruit buds but didn't open a single flower. I blame that on lack of chilling. I'm hoping you'll report on the fruit in a couple months. Don't think it will live up to it's billing but the bloom is really late, like a year late if I'm lucky.

and none of my cots have flowered at all

FN, years ago, a man who worked for me after working for a commercial grower for 10 years, told me about a mature Fuji apple tree someone tried to lift from the orchard with a tree spade (the owner sells such trees for about $700 per, you dig). After cutting most of the root system, the spade hit a huge rock and couldn't pull out the tree. That season the heavily root pruned tree had the best Fuji apples in the orchard. The fruit must have been exceptional or this event wouldn't have been remembered.

I would think you could get similar results with deficit irrigation, but the English and others used to do a lot of root pruning judging from the old literature.

Does this mean that you, the Brixmaster, will now begin spading around your "in soil" outdoor trees?

I hope the Early Blush will prove useful even when allowed to grow naturally. For northern growers is is the only available, very early apricot I know of.

Harvestman:

The high brix on Early Blush along with very high brix on other outdoor fruit over the years tells me my outdoor shelter project will be worth the effort. I should have had the shelter up to beat this years freeze. When I do get some production I'm pretty sure I can achieve high brix outdoors without root pruning. Deficit irrigation will be the answer.

My greenhouse has one flaw, it's a much more mild environment than outdoors. This reduces water demand and makes it critical that I tow the line on water applications. If not I get big watery fruit.

All my experience says outdoors will be much easier to grow high brix fruit. This fruit will also be smaller and firmer. The Early Blush I just harvested was half the size of greenhouse specimens, much higher brix, and much firmer.

What this tells me for those in mild, humid climates is that a greenhouse like mine would be hard to manage for good fruit. But a high tunnel where it gets hotter might still work. It also leaves me wondering where you guys stand outdoors in regards to water and fruit quality. That's why some brix measurements from you guys would be interesting. It would tell us all where you stand.

This post was edited by fruitnut on Mon, May 5, 14 at 9:14