Apricot

The wood of the apricot usually survives Central European lowland winters without damage. Late frost in March/April is tricky, when it flowers as one of the first fruit trees; plant it sheltered from wind and warm, best as an espalier against a south or west wall, and wrap the crown loosely in fleece when night frost is forecast during flowering (not directly on the blossom, and take it off again in the daytime so that pollinators can get in). Young trees you additionally protect at the trunk against frost cracks in the first years, and put container apricots in a sheltered spot in the first winter.

You propagate the apricot true to type exclusively by grafting; only in this way are the fruit quality, growth and winter hardiness of the chosen variety preserved. The most common method in the home garden is budding (T-budding): between mid-July and the beginning of September, when the bark separates easily from the wood, take a single dormant bud from a shoot of the variety you want and insert it into a T-shaped cut on the rootstock. On plum rootstocks you bud rather early (July to early August), on apricot or peach seedlings somewhat later in August. Suitable rootstocks in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) are above all myrobalan (cherry plum, vigorous, deep-rooting, adaptable to many soils, but readily throws suckers) or St. Julien A (medium vigour, more compact, undemanding and better suited to smaller gardens and heavy soils). If the bark can no longer be lifted cleanly in late summer, you switch to whip grafting or cleft grafting in early spring, before the buds break. You then cut scions in winter and store them cool and moist until grafting time. Seedlings grown from stones do bear fruit after a few years, but almost always differ markedly from the parent variety and are therefore unsuitable for propagating named varieties. Cuttings root very unreliably with the apricot and generally fail in the hobby sphere.