All guides
How to pick apricots
3 min read
The shortest season on this site and the fruit that most rewards going the week you hear about it.
12
farms
6
regions
May to August
picked
When you can pick apricots
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Across every region on Pickeria. Darker months are peak somewhere; your own region is narrower, and the table below gives it.
What to look for
- 1
Colour tells you less than feel. A deep orange apricot can still be hard and sour, so cup it and take only the ones that give slightly all over
- 2
Smell the shoulder where the stem meets the fruit. A ripe apricot is obviously fragrant and an unripe one smells of nothing at all
- 3
Lift and twist rather than pull. The spur it grows on carries next year's fruit and snaps off easily
- 4
Green anywhere on the skin means it will never sweeten. Apricots soften after picking but they do not gain sugar
- 5
Pick into a shallow container no more than two deep. They bruise more easily than peaches and the marks show within hours
What people get wrong
Every one of these is common enough to be worth naming.
- Going by colour. A deep orange apricot can be rock hard and sour, and colour arrives well before sugar
- Waiting for a convenient weekend. Apricot season is measured in weekends, not months, and the second one may not exist
- Pulling rather than lifting and twisting, which snaps the spur that carries next year's fruit
- Piling them more than two deep, because they mark faster than any other stone fruit
Varieties worth knowing
Farms post the variety at the gate. This is what the names mean.
Blenheim or Royal
The California heirloom that most people mean when they say a real apricot tastes different. Ugly, uneven, and superb.
Moorpark
An old English variety, large and richly flavoured, ripening unevenly on the same fruit.
Tilton
The canning and drying standard, firmer and more acidic, and what most commercial dried apricots start as.
Once you are home
Most people pick more than they planned to.
- Decide what you are doing with them before you pick, because you have about three days
- Apricot jam is the classic use and the one that most rewards good fruit over supermarket fruit
- Halve, stone and dry them if you can. Home-dried apricots taste nothing like the sulphured orange ones in shops
- They freeze acceptably in halves with sugar, though texture suffers more than with peaches
Where you can pick apricots
12 farms across 6 regions, earliest season first. Every date came from the farm's own words.
San Francisco, CA5 farms
Diablo Cherries, Three Nunns Farm, Pomeroy Farm and 2 more
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May to June
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June to July
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M
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June to July
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M
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July to August
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M
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July
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July
