Apricot (Khubani)

1. Land Preparation Pits 2 x 2 x 2 ft with 15–20 kg farmyard manure, spacing 20 x 20 ft. Apricot needs the best-drained land on the farm and does well on the stony fan soils of Chitral where little else fruits. 2.

Rabi Sowing Jan–Feb Harvest Jun–Jul 80–150 maund per acre

Land Preparation

Pits 2 x 2 x 2 ft with 15–20 kg farmyard manure, spacing 20 x 20 ft. Apricot needs the best-drained land on the farm and does well on the stony fan soils of Chitral where little else fruits.

Sowing Time & Method

Plant grafted plants in January–February while dormant. Apricot flowers earlier than any other fruit in KP, and that is its whole problem: in Chitral and upper Dir a late frost in March can take the entire crop. Plant on the upper slope, never in the valley bottom where cold air settles.

Seed Rate & Treatment

Buy grafted plants of a named variety. Halman and Charmagz are the well-known dried types of Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral.

Fertilizer

Per bearing tree per year: 25–30 kg farmyard manure in winter, 1 kg urea, 750 g DAP, 750 g SOP. Apply at bud swell, not earlier — feeding a dormant tree in deep winter simply leaches away.

Irrigation

Every 12–15 days from bud burst. Water steadily during stone hardening and fruit swell in May–June. Apricot splits and drops if it is dried out and then flooded.

Weed Control

Weed Damage Control Product
Bermuda Grass (Khabbal) Mats the basin and takes the terrace channel water before it soaks down to the roots. Hand hoe the basin; leave the terrace edge grassed
Bathu (Lambsquarters) Comes up thick in the basin in spring and takes the moisture the tree needs while setting fruit. Hand weeding while it is small, before it seeds
Field Bindweed (Lehli) Twines up young saplings and over the low branches, smothering the shoots that carry next season's fruit. Unwind it from the tree and dig the roots out
Chulai (Amaranth) Comes up thick in the watered basin in summer and takes the water and nitrogen the tree needs after picking. Uproot it young with a khurpa, before it seeds
Stinging Nettle (Bicchu Booti) Stands thick along the channel and in the basin and takes the spring water and manure before the tree gets it. Cut it back with a scythe; do not plough the terrace

Keep basins clean. On terraced Chitral land keep the terrace grassed and cut it — bare terraces collapse.

Insect Pests

Stone fruit borer tunnels into shoots and fruit. Aphid curls the new leaves in spring. Scale builds on old wood. San Jose scale is serious in the high valleys and shows as grey encrustation on bark with red-ringed spots on the fruit.

Diseases

Brown rot turns fruit into a shrivelled mummy that hangs on the tree all winter — pick off and burn every mummy in winter, because that is where next year's infection lives. Shot hole peppers the leaves with small holes. Gummosis oozes at pruning wounds made in wet weather.

Crop Care

Prune in late winter to an open centre. Thin fruit in April to a hand's width apart — an unthinned apricot gives a heavy crop of small fruit one year and nothing the next.

Harvesting

For fresh market pick firm-ripe when the ground colour turns from green to yellow. For drying let it ripen fully on the tree. Dry on clean raised racks in the sun, turning daily — apricot dried on the bare ground picks up grit and loses half its price.