THI{ 





(^apadiar) 4H[^>i'ticaItUrist 



Vol. XII. 



OCTOBER, 1889. 



No. 10. 



^- >Cj^€yr^ 



THE RUSSIAN APRICOT. 



^,N England the Apricot 

 is esteemed as one of 

 the choicest of stone 

 fruits whether for 

 jams or for dessert, 

 great beauty when well 

 much extolled. The 

 number of varieties is not great, 

 being limited to about ten or twelve, 

 among which the Moorpark, Breda, 

 Peach and Royal are prominent. It 

 is usually planted about twelve feet 

 apart, and trained to grow fan-shape 

 along the walls of the gardens or of 

 the gables of cottages, and like the 

 other plants and trees in an English 

 garden, receives far greater attention 

 in the culture, pruning, thinning, 

 etc., than do the fruit trees in the 

 majority of Canadian gardens. The 

 most suitable soil is a rather light, 

 sandy loam, well drained, such as is 

 also adapted to the peach tree. 



In America, the Apricot is very 

 little grown cast of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains, owing to the curculio, which 

 has a special fondness for it and 

 usually destroys the whole crop ; but 

 west of the Rockies, where the 



curculio is almost unknown, nearly 

 all the favorite English varieties are 

 successfully cultivated. These have 

 \'ery few points by which they may 

 be distinguished from each other, and 

 the chief reliable ones are : The color, 

 the shape of the stone and the taste 

 of the kernels. All may be pro- 

 pagated, with more or less constancy 

 from the pits. 



Owing to the tenderness of all 

 these varieties in our country and in 

 the Northern States, a great point 

 has been lately made of the introduc- 

 tion of the Russian stock to Kansas 

 by the Mennonites for which every 

 known excellence is claimed for 

 them, as, for example : freedom from 

 curculio, borer, black-rot, blight, etc. 

 Now all this must be taken with 

 some caution, although we have 

 great hopes that from these will be 

 ultimately developed a race of 

 apricots suitable to our climate. 

 The writer has some twenty-four of 

 these trees, three years planted, and 

 although they have bloomed freely, 

 no fruit has as yet been produced. 

 1 Ic has, therefore, no criticism to offer 



