I have a bunch of almond seedlings. Most of them look fine, but one has what looks like a magnesium and possibly phosphorus deficiency. It is also weeping at the edges of the leaves so it might be getting too much water. It had the same problems before transplant.
All are being grown in the same soil (clay), same water. No fertilizers.
So an opinion question. Since it’s the only one, should I:
A) Let it die or
B) Try to rescue it and find it another home
We’ve found almonds fairly easy from seed. I’d let nature take its course, unless there is something about its genetics that make it important.
I’d probably let it die, if you have plenty. If you only had one, I’d treat it with kid gloves, but if you have a bunch that are all doing better, my totally-uneducated-about-almonds opinion is that the sick one will continue to be hard to care for, and you may as well let it die and focus on the best ones.
It died, along with most of its siblings. I have 5 left, three in the ground and two in pots. I also have a full jar of almond seeds for next spring. 
Just a general question, how long does an almond tree take to flower from seed? Do you know how many years it takes until you can harvest some almonds? I read Apricots are rather quick 3-5 years, but I wonder how they compare?
I really don’t know. A peach almond cross was blooming for the first time when I sold my old house, and I believe it was about 4 years old. In my experience peaches take about 4 or 5 years from seed. I would guess almonds would be about the same, but it would only be a guess.
I believe my oldest seed-grown almond was about a year old when I left, and I left it behind.
Thanks for the reply. Oh a peach almond cross? How fascinating! Bummer you had to leave it behind, I would have love to know what the fruit looked like!
I have some thirty seedlings from peaches that did well in the garden. They flower pretty quickly. After three year of growth if i remember correctly.
Spring has been eratic for three years before this one which was normalish but with very low bee pollination rates.
Everybody working on fruit trees, get late flowering trees!
Industry has salivated like forever over getting the trees to be really early flowering. Early fruit makes twice the price.
Growers went to great length protecting their crops.
But we people who are mostly looking for food security kind of caught up in this. Just like with veggie seed compagnies pushing tasteless, long lasting, transport resistant varieties, they’ve done the same with fruit. Early-earlier-earliest, pushing in that direction.
And then weather weirding struck.
So no fruit for amateurs, we pay half a dollar for a ‘biological’ apple by now in the supermarket.
I’ve lost ten years to this before realising.
I see people on you tube speaking of having apples year round. Some varieties need frost to become sweeter. Some are late flowering and réal good keepers. I’ve bought two trees of those now. And a cherry which flowers late. Which hopefully one day when i’ve learned how to succesfully graft trees i can graft onto cherry rootstock.
Maybe one day i’ll have healthy fruit, but landracing thèse varieties is still far off.
We’ve started growing almonds, peaches, nectarines and apricots from seed. One precocious individual, a peach, flowered and fruited in its first year and has done so ever since though not terribly well. It has just finished its third season although a protracted drought followed by lots of rain have really set it back. Most of it died apart from this season’s water shoots that grew low down. Plants are truly amazing beings.
I prefer a staggered or long bloom period, which would never work for a commercial orchard. I want the tree to continuously bloom for as much as a month, which means if there’s a frost during that period it won’t take out the entire harvest.
The adult almond at my old house did this, and I am planting seeds from it, so I’m hopeful.
I like your idea of a long blooming period. Hopefully that will give you an extended period of ripe fruit, as well.
I’m trying to think of any fruit trees which produce continuously or over an extended season. The general pattern is a concentrated burst of production, usually tied to hormonal and metabolic changes in the whole tree. In the subtropics here some trees produce a few flushes a year but even here I can’t think of any that don’t concentrate peak production. I suspect you might end up with more pest issues with continuous production if it allows more of a population to build up.
Pre-industrial orchards with seedling trees usually had individual trees fruiting over a long range of time. This made hand harvesting a bit less of a mad rush all at once. Different selected grafted varieties could be grown together with staggered fruiting times too. But getting one single tree to flower and fruit bit by bit feels like it might be challenging due to issues of plant physiology. Worth a try though. Maybe nobody ever tried before.
My old almond tree (I don’t remember the variety) generally bloomed for about two weeks. One year we got a frost mid-bloom, lost about half the blossoms, and the tree just seemed to take a break for a few days before it finished blooming. We got a bumper crop that year.
What a smart tree! I like a tree that knows how to shake off a frost and keep on blooming.
Speaks of late flowering varieties