IME Flavor Supreme is vastly superior to Flavorosa. The later has dropped for me and tasted about like yours. Ditto off the tree in DWN test orchard Reedley, CA. Of course the catalogs make Flavorosa sound superb. I didn't have any better results with Flavor Royale. It was supposed to blow the socks off Flavor Supreme and ripen earlier, ha, wrong on both counts!

The only way I've ruined Flavor Supreme is by leaving too many on the tree or over watering. Just planted another 4 trees and ripped out those losers.

FN,

I had a Flavor Supreme and it procduced very light fruits even with a Santa Rosa 10 feet away. What plum varieties did you hand pollinate your FS.

Tony

Tony:

I hand pollinate Flavor Supreme with a variety of pluots. When hand pollinating I go in a circle collecting pollen and pollinating everything in turn. With as many varieties as I have it's all luck of the draw.

The last two yrs my Flavor Supreme way overset with hand pollination. Last yr I left about 100 fruit on a small tree in a pot, wrong, and they weren't too good. This yr I've left about 30 and expecting much better results. I'll probably not eat half those and give away the rest so why not thin more.

Excellent! Next year I will try pollinate it with F. King, F. Grenade, Dapple Dandy, and Pluerry. I Just want about 40 good fruits on a large tree. THX.

Tony

Tony, within a 30ft radius of my Flavor Supreme I have:
Flavorosa
Flavor King
Elephant heart
3n1 of Splash, Geo Pride, Emerald Drop
Santa Rosa
Satsuma
Flavor Queen
Dapple Dandy
Flavor Finale
Dapple Supreme- planted this year (I let it set a couple of fruit so I could sample)

I took fruitnut's advice and started hand pollinating my FS last year. I use one of those padded brushes that women use to apply eye makeup. My FS has been in the ground 4 or 5 years. Last year I had about 30 fruit, This year I had to thin like crazy and per fruitnut's advice I left about 50 fruit .

Steve: Great job!! I hope your FS is up to expectations!

From what I understand (and it's possible I could be wrong), usually the normal black-skinned pluots sold at the supermarket are the Flavorosa variety. (Flavorosa is the most common early season pluot, so will no longer be in supermarkets after early August)

It is a good tasting pluot in my opinion, very juicy and succulent, though it does fall a little short of being "amazing" or "fantastic", and is not extremely remarkable. It's just a little different in flavor and a little sweeter than a regular (Asian plum at the supermarket) plum. Almost like an "upgraded premium" plum.

Pluots tend to have a short window of time when they are ready to pick. Which is a significant disadvantage. Pick too early and they are not fully ripe and do not taste at their best. Wait too much longer than that and they will fall off the tree by themselves, or get too overripe and a little excessively juicy and soft (which also means poor shelf life).

I have some familiarity with different pluot varieties but am far from an expert. It's difficult for me to say whether Flavorosa is worth growing (for the home grower). I can say I have not been very impressed with several of the other pluot varieties I have tasted, so I would not say that the issue is Flavorosa is a bad pluot. I think it's a pretty decent pluot.