Growing your own apricots is rewarding as the firm flesh of the fruits is particularly tasty when freshly picked. Apricots are also suitable for a variety of sweet and savoury culinary uses. Apricot trees are part of the Prunus genus and we stock several hardy self-fertile varieties of Prunus armeniaca suitable for growing in the UK climate.

Growing Apricot Trees

The apricot varieties here are self-fertile, so do not need another apricot tree for pollination. If you do want to plant them with other fruit trees, they should be spaced approximately 3 metres apart. They are also pot-grown and so can be planted at any time of year, but if you want bareroot Apricot trees then please contact us as we may be able to supply them at certain times of year.

Apricot trees flower early and can coincide with frost. If this happens, we recommend protecting the blossom with horticultural fleece. Once the fruits have started forming in early summer, heavy crops should be thinned out to let those that remain turn into larger, healthier fruits. On young trees this also enables it to redirect more energy into growth of the tree itself.

The best time to prune Apricot trees is after the coldest part of the winter has passed, but before they start to flower. Apricot trees fruit on 1 year old wood, so benefit from quite hard pruning to remove old shoots (grey in colour) that will no longer produce fruit.

History of Apricot Trees

• It is actually unknown whether Apricots originated in Armenia or China
• On Persian trade routes, dried apricots were a significant commodity
• There is an Arabic saying roughly translated as "when the apricots bloom" which refers to their short season and is akin to the British saying of “wishful thinking”
• Apricot kernels have been used in traditional Chinese medicine
• Apricots have historically been used in English remedies to treat tumours and swelling