and then.. after waiting all that time.. you might find out that the fruit is useless ...

quality fruit trees are grafted onto understock.. to make more of a very fine edible fruit tree ...

when you then take that known fruit.. and cross it with God knows what..

the resultant fruit may or may not be pretty.. nor sweet.. nor edible [in the extreme] ...

it would be a fun experiment .. but dont pin the retirement on it ...

mail ordering a fine cultivar at the proper planting time ... will cost you about $30 ... and it should fruit within a few years ...

ken

Fruiting should occur fairly soon and quality could be quite adequate - you just don't know with certainty beforehand what the fruits will be like.

Cool climate might be the biggest problem. Are there other apricot trees in the neighborhood, that grow and fruit well? We can grow them up here but fruiting is often light due to disease problems. Bigger, older trees often riddled with blighted branches.

Actually, I've done a number of them this way, and I have 6 trees right now that were from pits. You can get some nice fruit this way, or, as pointed out above, you might get a real dog.

The good thing with apricots and peaches is that they're fast to bear for a tree -- usually in 3 or 4 years from germination.

By the way -- the pit has to go through a cold winter in the soil before it will sprout. If your climate is too mild, you can also do it in a bag of damp spaghnum or potting mix in the refrigerator for 3 or 4 months.

As with anything, with a hybrid seed you don't know what you are going to get, as hybrids don't come true.

Dan

I wouldn't expect an apricot pit to produce a hybrid tree. Since these have been crossed with other stone fruits to produce intentional hybrids a spontaneous hybrid coming from an orchard grown fruit might be theoretically possible, but I certainly wouldn't expect it under ordinary circumstances.

o The apricot bought at the chain grocery is 99% chance hybrid.
o The apricot bought at Whole Paycheck is 98% chance hybrid.
o The apricot bought at a farmer's market in Bay Area is perhaps minimum 50% chance hybrid, maybe 75%.
o The seed from a hybrid stone fruit will very likely not come true. The seed from an heirloom stone fruit will come true.

Dan

Hybrid with what? They're coming out of large commercial plantations with acres of nothing but Prunus armeniaca.

Why would a heirloom P. armeniaca cultivar be more pure than a modern P. armeniaca cultivar? They're both supposed to be P. armeniaca. If anything, the heirloom cultivar at a farmer's market is more likely to come out of a small mixed orchard with much greater opportunity for crossing with other species of stone fruits.

If P. armeniaca crosses that readily with other Prunus on its own, without deliberate human meddling (closed pollinations).

The orchards themselves consist of hybrid trees. It has been many years since I had the stone fruit lecture in plant propagation, so I don't recall the details or commercial names, nor can I ride out to an orchard and ask an orchardist, as I've moved away from the Central Valley.

Dan