Apricot: flowers dropping without setting fruit

What it is likely to be on apricot

1. Cold damage

   Candidate 1very common on this plant

   ·source

   Sourced guidancehigh confidence

   • Royal Horticultural Society: Apricot — growing

   Checked 2026-08-13

   Blackened, translucent or limp tissue appearing suddenly after a cold night or a spell beside a draught. Tender plants show it well above freezing — basil blackens around 10 °C — so 'there has been no frost' does not rule it out.

   Points towards it

   • · apricot flowers in February and almost every British spring frosts it
   • · an unprotected tree in the open is flowering weeks before it is safe to

   Argues against it

   • · blossom under glass has not been frosted

   Check this next

   Note the date more than anything on the tree. Apricot is the earliest thing most gardens grow and flowers in February, so blossom lost before the middle of March is frost until proved otherwise — no other cause is even available that early.

   What to do now

   Fleece the tree overnight whenever frost is forecast while it is in flower, and remove it each morning so insects can reach the blossom. This is genuinely practical on an apricot in a way it is not on a mature plum: the tree is small, usually wall-trained, and only needs covering for a few weeks.

   ·source

   Sourced guidancehigh confidence

   • Royal Horticultural Society: Apricot — frost protection

   Checked 2026-08-13

2. Poor fruit set

   Candidate 2very common on this plant

   ·source

   Sourced guidancehigh confidence

   • Royal Horticultural Society: Apricot — pollination

   Checked 2026-08-13

   A plant that flowers freely and sets little or no fruit. It is the commonest disappointment in fruit growing and it has four quite different causes, only one of which is the plant's fault. Working out which applies is the difference between fixing it and replacing a healthy tree.

   Points towards it

   • · no frost, and the blossom looked healthy while it lasted
   • · apricot flowers when almost nothing is flying, so the pollen is often simply not moved

   Argues against it

   • · a frost explains the loss without needing an insect shortage

   Check this next

   Watch the open blossom for a few minutes on a mild day. Apricot is self-fertile, so a partner tree is not the issue — the question is whether anything is visiting at all, and in February the answer is usually nothing.

   What to do now

   Hand-pollinate with a soft brush, working from flower to flower around the middle of a mild day. It takes a few minutes on a wall-trained tree and is the difference between a crop and none, because self-fertile only means the pollen works — something still has to move it.

   ·source

   Sourced guidancehigh confidence

   • Royal Horticultural Society: Hand pollination

   Checked 2026-08-13

Narrow it down

This page lists everything at once, which is the right shape for reading and the wrong shape for deciding. The interactive tool asks one question at a time, starting with whichever would separate these causes fastest, and stops as soon as further answers would not help.

Opens with the plant and the symptom already set. Nothing you answer is stored or sent anywhere — the answers live in the address bar and nowhere else.

What this does not cover

These are the causes GrowingHQ holds rules for on apricot — not every cause there is. Where several problems look alike, the honest answer is often that they cannot be told apart by eye, and a page that named one would be guessing. If none of the above fits, the general flowers dropping without setting fruit page lists causes across all plants, and the Apricot profile lists the problems it is prone to.