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Climate Requirements
- Turkey’s local varieties are generally suitable for regions that have a continental climate. Those areas are dry and hot in summers, cold in winters and low in proportional humidity. Local varieties are not suitable for humid and temperate regions since they require dry weather in summer and long chill hours in winter. In the case of cultivating these varieties in the coastline zone, since the humidity is high, fungus disease can be seen more frequently. And since those areas are temperate, trees cannot get sufficient chilling. It causes branches to shake their buds off and also very low or no productivity. Due to the lack of knowledge, some producers create gardens with these varieties and in time those gardens get uprooted. As a result time and expenses go down the drain.
- Turkey’s local apricot varieties require high chilling hours and contain high level of sugar so, generally, they are used as dried. For instance, Hacihaliloğlu and Kabaaşı varieties are commonly cultivated in Malatya province of Turkey and they are suitable for drying up. In Malatya, Hasanbey and Şekerpare varieties are edible and used for drying up, Aprikoz (Şalak), which is commonly cultivated in Iğdır, has a fair reputation for fresh consumption in the domestic market of Turkey.
- Adaptation experiments done in recent years show good results on cultivating European varieties which are suitable for humid regions, require fewer chilling hours and they are resistant to fungus diseases in Mediterranean and Aegean regions that have ecologies allowing early growing. Varieties suitable for fresh consumption and exportation should be cultivated in the aforesaid regions. Some of these varieties are Precoce de Tyrinthe, Bebeco, Canino and Joubert Foulon.
Soil Requirements
- Soil requirements change according to which rootstock is used. Since in Turkey apricot seedlings are used as rootstocks, required soil type is deep, permeable, non-retentive, rich in nutrient, loamy or loamy calcareous. Apricot trees growing in the soils with limited depth, with rock bottom right under it or in the stony, sandy soils bear small and low in quality fruits.
- Heavy, hydrophilic and argillaceous soils are not suitable for apricots. In those sorts of soils, degumming and in the later years premature death occurs.
- If you want to cultivate apricots in sandy soils, using peach seedlings as the rootstock can be useful to get higher quality fruits. And if you want to do cultivation in heavy soils, myrobalan rootstock is preferable. However, please note that there can be graft incompatibility with those rootstocks, some apricot varieties may differ in incompatibility and some may provide acceptable compatibility.
Creating Apricot Gardens
- Spring late frosts can considerably affect apricots as being an early blossom fruit variety. Therefore, apricot garden shouldn’t be created in the riverside with frost hazard, plains and hollow sides. Since the riversides, undersides of the slant fields and hollow areas are generally the places that cold weather and fog descend on, you should avoid from such areas for cultivation. Apricots like very light areas that are continuously receiving sunlight, so southward, slightly slant areas are suitable for apricots. Terracing can be done in the very slant fields.
- Fields, in which apricots gardens will be created, should be cultivated deeply a few times in spring and should be left fallow until the planting season namely until fall.
- Fruit trees should be planted in spring in the regions with harsh winter conditions. In the regions with less winter colds, planting should be done in fall. If planting is done in fall and the soil heat is sufficient, root activity continues and saplings hang onto the soil more strongly. For this reason, fruit trees grow faster in summer and risk of desiccation minimizes.
