Last year I decided to grow an apricot tree from seed. For the last 16 months I have been stratifying, germinating, testing and watching. Because everyone I spoke to had slightly different suggestions, I tested several different processes to grow my apricot tree. I was actually looking forward to the experiment of trying each.
In the article below I’ll talk about the different methods I tried, and which one worked the best for me.
Have you ever eaten a fresh apricot – or any stone fruit for that matter – and gotten to the pit and thought, I wonder if that will grow?! I have. So last year, at the height of the lockdown, I did it. I grew an apricot tree from my pit.
Apricot trees do very well here in this region. In fact, they were a prime crop grown throughout the nineteen and twentieth centuries in Santa Clara County, before Silicon Valley moved in. Apricot tree farmers here pioneered the growing and drying techniques which fueled the mass distribution of dried fruits throughout the depression and later years in America.
In one of my previous posts, I talk a little about how important apricots were to the Santa Clara valley prior to high tech moving in. You can read that article here.
It was this apricot jam recipe which gave me the idea to grow an apricot tree. Before this batch of fresh, organic fruit, I must have only ever had under-ripe apricots, or dried apricots. But this batch from a local orchard were sweet, light and luscious. So of course, I wanted to try to grow my own tree.
However, when doing research, there is conflicting information out there about what best steps to take and in what order. So I thought I would do the legwork and test out several different methods to see which ones worked the best.
I started out with several seeds from my basket of apricots. To reduce randomness and attempt to validate my results, I batched them in twos. The variables included seed extraction, soaking, cold stratification, and direct sowing.
Extracting the Seed
An apricot, much like a nectarine or peach, has a pit. The seed is inside the pit. Even though it is true that an apricot could technically sprout through the hard outer shell of the seed, like it might in nature, you increase your chances significantly when you extract the seed from its shell.
This is because the seed gets its signal to sprout once it has stratified and received sufficient moisture. This by the way, is true of any seed. Variability comes from how much time, temperature, and moisture different seeds need.
Back to the pit…. even when the seed does sprout, inside its shell, it has to work a lot harder and longer to break through the shell. Taking the shell off allows the seed to germinate faster and more reliably.
So, how do you extract the seed? Believe it or not, you can gently use a nutcracker. Or even a pliers. If you don’t have a nutcracker, you can very, very slowly and gently use a vice. The key is to have slow and even pressure until the shell cracks. If you go too hard or too fast, you run the risk of damaging the seed inside.
Soaking
Once the seed was extracted from its hard outer shell, the next variable I tested was seed soaking. Soaking is a common procedure for any large seeds with hard outer skins, including pumpkins and gourds. This softens the seed and, depending on the type of seed, may signal to the seed to awaken and start to grow. Half of my batches got a soaking prior to stratification. The other half I skipped the soaking process.
As I mentioned, I batched my seeds in twos. This allowed me to test several variables. I soaked half of the seeds, and the other half I left dry and did not soak. Then I took half of the soaked seeds and cold stratified them, and the other half and wet stratified them. The seeds which were not soaked were also half cold and half wet stratified.
I’ll cut to the chase; soaking did not make a difference as to which seeds sprouted. It also did not impact the timing of sprouting either.
Stratification
On the other hand, stratification was all-important to which seeds sprouted and which did not.
Stratification is the process of helping the seed to know when it should germinate. Many seeds will not germinate until it senses the time is just right for it to do so. This is to protect the seed from coming out at the wrong time, such as when snow is on the ground. Germination can be triggered by moisture, cold, or just plain old time, depending upon the type of seed.
Apricot trees are only marginally cold hardy, and while they still do need some chill hours each winter, they generally do not like to overwinter at temperatures lower than 32 degrees F. This is why some sources suggested wet or no stratification rather than cold stratification.
So, after the soak, I split those soaked seeds into two groups. I wrapped the seeds in a damp paper towel and put them inside a plastic baggie. The first group was placed in the refrigerator. The second went into a cool garage.
I repeated this process with the seeds which were NOT soaked; ie, split into two groups, wrapped in a damp paper towel inside a baggie, and then half placed in the fridge and half into a cool room. I’ve written another whole article which goes into more details on germinating seeds in a paper towel if you want step by step instructions.
Germination
After one month, all of the seeds in the fridge had tiny sprouts, but none of the cool stratification seeds had any signs of germination at all. Another month passed, and the seeds in the fridge continued to grow and the seeds in cool stratification did not.
At this point I put the seeds from the cool room into the refrigerator. Those seeds which had not shown any life at all prior to this, all started to germinate within two weeks. So even though apricot trees are only marginally cold hardy, these apricot seeds germinated much faster and reliably with cold stratification.
Transplanting
Eventually, with the cold stratification, all the batches of my apricot seeds sprouted. However, not all of them took well to transplanting.
In addition to the four groups of germinated seeds which got the soak and stratification treatments, I also had two seeds to directly plant without pre-germinating.
I planted each seed in 5 gallon plastic pots. The soil I used was a mix of fortified garden soil and a mixture of fast draining bark soil. I then put four of the germinated seed pots outdoors in mid day sunshine, three of them outside but in a protected area safe from full sun, and two I kept indoors near a window.
All eight of the germinated seeds pushed through the soil and leafed up. The pots with moisture-retentive soil performed the best. Well-draining soil performed poorly for me. The sprouts in full sun got a bit burned from too-bright sun, and once this happened, they stopped growing. Those in the protection of dappled sun and those inside the house performed well for me.
Rabbit poop as fertilizer
Grow an Apricot Tree – Summary
In summary, based upon my experiments, the most effective way to grow an apricot tree from seed is to:
- Remove the seed from its hard outer shell
- Wrap it in a moist paper towel and put it inside a plastic baggie
- Cold stratify in the fridge for a minimum of 30 days
- Plant in a good quality, moisture-retaining soil in a protected pot inside the house or in a greenhouse.
- Transplant your young apricot tree to its forever home in the spring after spending its second year in the original pot.
