How to Plant Apricot Seeds and a Detailed Guide to Apricot Pit Sowing Time
How are apricots grown? Would you like to find out? In fact, the pit you leave after eating an apricot can be planted to grow an apricot tree. If you want to grow one yourself, take a look at the introduction below.
After you finish the apricot fruit, the core inside is the seed, and it can be planted directly in the soil. Generally speaking, if you plant it now, it will not sprout until early spring next year. To help it sprout better, you can tap it lightly with a hammer; just hearing the pit crack softly once is enough. Do not hit the kernel inside, which is the almond.
The apricot tree belongs to the Rosaceae family and is a small deciduous tree. It is suitable for planting in somewhat sandy loam. In the Nanwan area there is quite a lot of clay, so you can buy some river sand, the kind of sand children play with, but not sea sand, and mix it with the clay. Every year after the leaves drop in winter, apply more phosphorus fertilizer and potassium fertilizer, but not nitrogen fertilizer; in summer, when it flowers and fruits, use a fertilizer with an equal ratio of nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium, such as 5-5-5, 10-10-10, 15-15-20, and the like.
Once this apricot fruit starts growing, it will grow very vigorously, and the tree will set a great many fruits, so thinning the fruit is a necessary task. When the fruits are still small fruitlets, you can remove every even-numbered fruit in the same row. For example, if there are 20 fruits in the same row on this branch, remove the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, and 10th. This is the first round of fruit thinning.
When they are a bit larger, you can carry out a second round of fruit thinning. This time the spacing can be increased to removing 1 out of every 3. For example, remove the 1st, 4th, 7th, 10th, and so on. The way to remove the fruit is to bend it at an angle at the stem with your fingers and then snap it off. Do not pull the fruit straight off along the stem and branch, because that will cause more unnecessary damage.
When the apricot has just been planted, it needs more water; keeping the soil moist helps it sprout smoothly. If you want to limit its height, you can cut the apricot tree flat across the middle, cutting away both thick and thin branches, and it will start growing out to both sides. Generally speaking, once it grows to knee height, you can adjust it as you wish. Some people want it to keep growing upward, and that is fine too; it can grow to the height of one and a half stories. If someone wants to keep it at a height that is convenient for reaching and harvesting, then cut it off horizontally according to your own standard.