Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - [NAFEX] re: Manchurian Bush Apricots

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: dwoodard@becon.org
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [NAFEX] re: Manchurian Bush Apricots
  • Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 19:41:24 -0500 (EST)

At the price Doreen quotes these are obviously seedlings.

I would be most interested if Dave Griffin can tell us explicitly whether
average seedlings have good quality for jam.

There is apparently considerable variation in the sensitivity of
Manchurian apricot to winter thaws and spring freezes causing dormancy
problems. The Vineland experiment station in the Niagara peninsula found
it impossible to keep the cultivar Sansin (bred in Manitoba I believe)
alive, and Scout didn't last too well. Prunus armeniaca is a profitable
commercial crop in the peninsula, especially east of St. Catharines,
and Vineland has bred many cultivars. Ken Taylor at Montreal (Windmill
Point Farm) found one of the cultivars of P. mandschurica that used to be
offered by Lakeshore Tree Farms of Saskatoon did well with him and the
other did not (sorry, I can't recall their names at the moment).

The Alberta station at Brooks bred Brookcot to be growable and
reasonably productive in chinook country.

The Morden, Manitoba bred cultivars Westcot and Morden 604 are a mix of
armeniaca and mandschurica. Morden 604 was in the Vineland collection for
many years and may be still.

All of which implies that if you are in the east in sugar maple country
and you grow one seedling of Manchurian apricot it may or may not suit
your climate. I think it would be a considerable gamble. You could select
from several but you would have to wait until they fruited for a few
years. I think that with restricted space a cultivar known to do well in
the locality or a similar climate would be a better bet.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page