Steem-agro Contest: "Basic Knowledge in Agriculture #15"

Saving apricots.

Recently I have been intensively studying everything related to agriculture and this is gardening and horticulture livestock and poultry farming, beekeeping and fish farming, so when I saw the Steem-agro Contest: "Basic Knowledge in Agriculture #15" I realized that this is a topic close to me especially since it talks about basic knowledge in this area.

I may have some practical experience in all these areas but for the most part it is basic and I cannot call myself an expert in this area rather I am someone who is trying to learn as much as possible about this and if possible apply it in practice.

I really hope that this will happen in the near future.

Today I want to touch on such a topic as saving the apricot harvest in the spring at the stage of the beginning of the flowering of these trees.

I remember the times when several apricot trees of different varieties grew on my parents' summer cottage.

They gave us magnificent fruits especially the large-fruited variety of apricot called "Pineapple" indeed the taste of the fruits resembled the taste of pineapple.

But after a few years problems with these trees began first due to spring frosts all the ovaries of the fruits fell off or rather all the flowers fell off the branches and then due to freezing rain in May the tree trunks burst and the trees had to be cut down.

Much time has passed since then and now we think about the trees that we will plant on our land plots and apricots occupy one of the first places in our thoughts.

As I already said the main enemy of the apricot harvest is spring frosts before Easter.

Yes, if you don't know when apricots will bloom look at the calendar Easter days will most likely be marked with color there.

And so periodically exactly on the day when the apricot blossoms the air temperature drops critically below five degrees below zero and this means that there is no longer any need to wait for the apricot harvest.

As it turns out there are some ways to combat such a period of frost and I am currently studying them.

Some people find this works well some say that all this is nonsense but this needs to be tested in practice.

The main task in all methods is the gardener's attempt to deceive the tree and make it bloom a week later than usual.

Inside the tree there is a biological sensor that reacts to the soil temperature and the ambient air temperature at a certain point this temperature reaches critical marks and flowers appear on the apricot branches.

There are different methods of such deception but it is better to use them in combination.

To begin with it is recommended to whitewash the trunk and branches of the tree the white color prevents the wood from heating up under the influence of the spring sun.

I also recommend covering the tree trunk with snow and thus cooling it at the end of February.

Watering the soil around the tree during frosts seems strange but they say that it works because the formed ice lens will melt slowly.

And of course I recommend mulching the soil over the snow or ice.

It will be interesting to test this in practice.

As for frosts during the flowering period everything seems clear but I have a big question about the possibility of saving already set apricot fruits during a May snowfall such as in these photographs, when a huge mass of snow breaks the branches and young fruits can die due to frost.

When I registered the building plan of my land plot I indicated a building six meters wide and twenty-four meters long.

This is a future underground greenhouse which goes underground by one and a half meters and is covered with polycarbonate sheets.

The walls of such a greenhouse are pasted over with reflective foil and as the practice of gardeners who have already built such underground greenhouses shows this allows maintaining positive temperatures inside the greenhouse even in severe frosts without additional heating.

As a rule exotic lemons persimmons bananas and pineapples are grown there but I have not heard that such a method was used when growing apricots the crowns of the trees of which can be formed in the way we need and not allowed to grow too much upward.

I don’t know maybe it sounds strange but you can try to use it.

I wish you all a huge harvest!

I invite my friends @eii @ranartblog @xaviduran to take part.

Zoom in on a photo for a closer view.

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More to come!

Enjoy viewing the photos and reading the article!

Have a blessed day!

Category:	Art, Photography, digital art.
Tools:	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX300
Location:	Ukraine
Author:	Author @barski. In my publications you will see only my author's works.

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