field note
The first apricot bloom
Year four. The stone-fruit trees we planted in 2023 came into full bloom this spring. They will not fruit yet, but the bloom told us the trees had taken.
· Sameer Jain · 1 min read
Three Marches in. The apricot trees we planted in spring 2023 came into full bloom this month. We had been watching the catkins on the walnut block carefully — walnut blooms first, apricot follows — and the timing this year was a clean two-week gap. Almost no overlap, which is what the trees prefer.
Year four for a stone-fruit tree is a curious year. The tree has enough energy to flower and even to set a few fruit, but commercial harvest is still a year or two away. The bloom is a signal that the roots have taken hold of the slope, that the rootstock has accepted the scion, and that the tree is going to be here for the next forty years.
We did not pick any fruit this year either. The few that set we left on the tree; they will fall on their own, and the tree will read that as permission to push more next year. The harvest is in 2027 or 2028, whichever the weather decides.
Standing under the bloom, three Marches in, is the first moment any of us have felt that we were not making a bet. We were doing the thing.