I’m propagating a couple of interesting apricots.

One is/was the co-state champion tree for Colorado, with a trunk much larger than I can get my arms around, but it’s in severe decline. I grafted a copy in about 2014 that’s now reached bearing age.  Apparently the original is well over a century old. It is also more reliable than any other apricot I’ve seen in the Boulder area, producing a few fruits during many years that other apricots are barren.  In 2008 we made quite a bit of jam from groundfalls. (Visit this tree on the north side of the West Senior Center in downtown Boulder).

The other is from 8100′ in Garfield County, next to a dirt road, two thousand feet above the Colorado River. This had fruit when I first noticed it in the summer of about 2003. It bore a good crop a couple of years ago. This tree is in quite a xeric spot — dry hillside, south facing — but has been doing pretty well there. As with the other tree, fruits are small, but good-tasting.

This apricot tree, at 8100′ elevation on the Coffee Pot Road in Garfield County, is the highest fruiting apricot I’ve yet seen in Colorado.

I’d like to get both of these trees grafted onto rootstocks and distributed to several interested, experienced gardeners/fruit growers.  For this next round of propagation, I want to ensure the continuation of these varieties, but in future years I think it would be great to see them more widely distributed.

If you are in the (general) Boulder/Denver area, and are interested in growing one or both of these, please contact me (Eric) and let me know a  bit about you and your experience with fruit growing.  It’s conceivable I’ll have some small trees in 2021, but due to a delay in receiving some rootstocks, it could be 2022.

Short of providing actual trees, I’m also happy to provide dormant scions/budwood or Summer budwood.  Let me know if that’s of interest.