Can you tell the difference between the Puget Gold apricots and the single Goldbar apricot from our orchard?

It’s been a long wait. We, the volunteers of Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard, planted our first fruit trees in 2009 and it’s only this year, in 2013, that we were lucky enough to taste our first harvest. In the first two or three years that your fruit tree is in the ground, you need to remove the baby fruit so that the tree will focus its energy on its roots. In 2012, we were going to allow our fruit trees to fruit, but it was a terrible year for pollination due to the fluctuation of the weather and late frosts in the early spring.

This year, we and our trees were ready to go! Our cherries, apricots and apples were successfully pollinated. Unfortunately, we didn’t have an opportunity to enjoy our cherries as a park visitor harvested our entire tree before we had a chance to taste the cherries (see previous blogs), but one of our three apricot trees pollinated so well this year and it was laden with wonderful fruit. We waited and waited for the fruit to ripen and in early August we called an emergency harvest day so that we could harvest the fruit.

The timing wasn’t perfect. We all arrived in the park after dinner on Thursday July 31, 2013. Our first job was to clean up the fallen fruit around the tree which we disposed of in the compost. Then the picking began! The tree that pollinated so beautifully was a Puget Gold apricot, a self pollinating tree that has grown vigorously since it was planted in 2010. The fruit was firm and sweet and was wonderful to eat raw. But because it is such a firm fruit, it’s also great to cook with as it keeps its shape. Sherry Firing, our head gardener, grilled hers and drizzled them with maple syrup to serve as a side dish with dinner. Yum!

Four volunteers were happily harvesting our Puget Gold when Susan realized that another apricot tree – a Goldbar apricot that we thought had not properly pollinated, had one beautiful, large, ripe and juicy apricot on the tree. Just one! We picked it and you can see it in the harvest basket in the picture above. It was juicy and even sweeter than the Puget Gold. Goldbar is a tree that needs to be planted near to a pollination partner tree but the fruit is absolutely delicious fresh off the tree. And yet, cooking with Goldbar apricots may result in apricot mush. It just goes to show the importance of choosing the right variety to plant for your unique needs.

On that note, Susan Poizner, Director of fruit tree education company Orchard People and a founder and the coordinator of Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard will soon be teaching a workshop on how to choose a fruit tree, and there’s lots more too it than just picking a type of fruit that tastes good. Think in terms of cross pollination, disease resistance, staggering the harvest and much more. For more information keep an eye on our calendar on this website or make sure you are signed up for our newsletter.