I grew it. When I could get any fruit to set, it was delicious, but for the most part it simply wouldn't set, despite abundant plum blossoms nearby. I took it out.

That's a bummer. I'm planning to do the same thing to 2 AU plums I have, and I'm trying to find something to fill their places.

I really wish it would have worked out. The taste is much better than plums.

That's what I keep hearing. I don't understand the difference between plumcots and pluots, but I'm ordering some peach trees from the Fruit Tree Farm and they also have Spring Satin, so I thought I'd give it a try. It's the only one they carry, so I'll probably look at some pluots instead.

iirc, pluot is a registered trademark, plumcot is generic

I have 2. One is entering it's 2nd growing season and did not flower much, another it's 3rd and flowered quite a bit. The older one has about 10 pieces of fruit at the moment. The 2 trees are studs and train easier than my other "stones". Early yet, We'll see what happens. Chad

It takes a year or two more than a usual plum to start producing. I now get a good fruit set on it. One year I didn't thin enough and the fruits were not so tasty, but if the thinning is heavy the taste is very good, similar to the standard red pluot flavor.

Scott

I purchased the starkbros dwarf spring satin plumcot along with their aprium, apricot and starkrimson plum. The purple fruit in the picture is about 1/2 the plumcots from the tree last year. They have a somewhat tart skin, but the flesh is juicy and sweet and are absolutely delicious. I freeze many plumcots and eat them in the winter and it seems the flavor is intensified. The birds love them and thus have to net the tree or put the green drawstring tule bags around the fruit. I just started harvesting this years crop and each year it has heavy fruit set so i thin the fruit.

garedneck, how old is your spring satin? and how many years did it take before it started to produce for you.
Ray

Planted in the Spring of 2009 (bare root) started producing in 2011. This dwarf tree is about 8 feet tall and 8 feet in diameter with extremely heavy fruit set which i thin each spring.

Is Spring Satin plumcot a 50-50 cross?

Yes,

Tony

Just planted this one. I am a little worried that the blooms may be affected by the frost in a week. *sigh

It is a three year old tree and sits about 6' high. Cannot wait to taste the fruit. I suppose I should remove the fruit so she develops structure, but I will be tempted to leave it on if I get any.

I ran across this while trying to trace the origin of Spring Satin plumcot. Mine is on its 3rd leaf. Lovell? Flood irrigation. Phoenix, AZ. Lowest chills on 13 years, can't be more than 250 this year. Tree is loaded! Need to thin better next year. All along the branches and on trunk spurs (which are larger hence the need to thin more). When ripe they taste great. Not ripe not so much. Ripen at different times. Shake the branches to get the more ripe ones to fall.

edit: USDA cross
https://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2000/000613.htm

Fascist-Nation, I'm curious...have u gotten fruit on Spring Satin more than 1 year? You definitely don't qualify for adequate chill hours...wondering if I could grow this in Houston and get fruit at 500 chill hours. Anyone else growing this get fruit with less than the recommended 700-800 chill hours? Using a pollinator?

You can grow it in Houston, and you have to have a pollinator.

Palazzo

I think it will matter where you are located in Houston. North Houston gets much more chill hours than the areas in central Houston or near the coast. You can go to getchill.net and find a weather station near you and see how many hours you actually get. I am in North Beaumont and plan on trying one next year also. Over the last 5 years I had anywhere from 900 hours to 450 hours. I think I am rated at about 550 hours.

thanks Gary!I'm in the woodlands...I've been trying to find a more accurate way to find chill hrs.

Palazzo

Forgot to tell you that getchill.net does not work on internet explorer. It does work on firefox. It has been that way for several months.

Gary, it works great. I got some very good info for both The Woodlands and Bryan, I was surprised that the chill hrs were much higher than I thought....which means I can get some more medium to high chill cultivars!

I just get back from the 2015 CRFG convention in San Diego and have emails of new activity in Houzz. Houston? Well I will try to answer you after I promote the local RFG.

Texas branch:
Houston Area
Edward Self
20422 Canyon Gate Blvd.
Katy, TX 77450
(281) 770-1450
Email: houston@crfg.org
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/txrarefruitgrowers/info
http://thebellhouse.weebly.com/home/2013-texas-rare-fruit-growers-scion-exchange

And Houston Chills and Fruit recommendations:
http://yearroundgardening.me/tag/chill-hours-southeast-texas/
http://harris.agrilife.org/files/2011/05/fruitnut.pdf
http://www.houstongardengirl.com/2011/01/fruit-tree-series-1.html
http://harris.agrilife.org/hort/publications-links/

_Fascist-Nation, ...have u gotten fruit on Spring Satin more than 1
year? You definitely don't qualify for adequate chill hours...wondering
if I could grow this in Houston and get fruit at 500 chill hours.
...Using a pollinator?_

I did get a few dozen fruits on 2nd leaf. That was also a poor chill
hour winter and was the lowest in 12 years. You will undoubtedly meet
the tree's actual chill hours which are <250. What that could mean
for you would be flowering too early some early springs with a late
freeze killing the buds/flowers.

As for a pollinator, I have dozens of _Prunus_ sp. cultivars that co-bloom within 100 ft. of that tree. And lots of pollinating insects hard at work.

Remember chill hour estimates are somewhat a guess in the beginning and I
have never seen a release with less than 600 chills to begin with due
to the area(s) of initial trial not being lower than this amount of
chill AND fear of being sued by growers if they plant a few million
dollars in trees and then a few years later it is proved the chill hour
estimate were inadequate.

That happened south of Phoenix when an Ag
agent convinced a grower to plant acres of pistachio trees only to have
them poorly bloomed in eight years due to lack of 800 or more chills. They are now pecan trees lining the highway between Phoenix and Tucson.

The other thing to remember with chills is there is a lot of formulas,
but the only two that count are accumulated chills between Nov 1 and Feb
28 of either <45F, or >32F to <45F. This is what appears on
the tag by the wholesale nursery. This is what their estimate is based
upon. All the other subtraction formulas out there are attempts to
model bloom time better that the above formulas produce for a particular
species of "fruit" tree.

Great information! I have checked out a number of those sites in the past. that's good insight into the chill hours and why it would be advantageous to put them at higher hours for the nursery trade. I can confirm the problem we have here is stone fruit coming out of dormancy too early and the blooms getting killed by the inevitable late frosts. How does spring satin rate as far as taste in your opinion? If anyone has any info on varieties that bloom later and don't get killed by late frosts that would be awesome.

Can anyone confirm today if this variety of plumcot will grow and bear fruit in zone 9b? I live in east Central Florida with USDA zone 9b. On a good winter we may get from 400-450 chill hours but not much beyond that. However, I have setup a weather monitoring station in my home orchard and this past winter noticed that the average temperature in my back yard is anywhere between 5-10 degrees cooler than those weather stations in a 5 mile radius of me. Also given the geography of my yard I tend to have high winds in my property during the winter months. So I am wondering if I should take a chance on this plum. Currently I have 4 Santa Rosa plum trees, two Methley plum trees, two Starking Delicious plum trees, and two Shiro plum trees in my home orchard. These are all plantings put in within the past 3 years. Oh I also have apricots, apriums, peaches and nectarines. I really would like to try this variety out given its reported resistance to disease. I want to know if anyone has had success with in a high heat, low chill areas.

Mine is a 5’ twig. It was a gift and I struggled to bring it back to life. It seemed to be doing well but now looks like it has a bug. Anyone have any idea what attacks these Spring Satin Plumcots. The leaves are turning yellow and has brown spots and occasionally little holes. However, Texas has had record heat. Is that the culprit?

Probably, you need to keep it well watered or you may lose the tree.

Update on my comment posted May 11, 2017!

Don't believe the published chill hours and USDA zone recommendations for this plumcot. I took a chance on two of these trees from Stark Bro's nurseries in 2017. One died because I accidentally ran over it with my lawn mower but the other survived. Not only did it survive but it thrived! This spring (March of 2019) the tree EXPLODED in blooms! I was shocked by this. I mean every single branch was completely covered in beautiful white flowers typical of plums. It is an amazing little tree. I live in East Central Florida USDA zone 9b and I can tell you from the weather station in my home orchard that we did not receive anywhere near the number of chill hours referenced in the published literature for this tree. I am so happy with this little plum tree I went ahead and ordered two more from Ison's Nurseries in Georgia. Stark Bro's was out of them but Ison's still has them in stock! I would say this tree has a chill hour requirement of probably less than 200. I used the website http://getchill.net and entered my weather station ID and got the following restuls

Below 45 Model: 123 chill hours
Between 45 and 32 Model: 123 chill hours
Utah Model: -1444 chill units
Positive Utah Model: 371 chill units
Dynamic Model: 14 chill portions

I think the favored chill model is called the modified Utah model. Personally I kind of like the Positive Utah model myself but in any case you can clearly see how little chill we had this year. Even so my little plumcot just exploded in blooms. I have to see whether that translates into fruit this year. The photo I uploaded was taken in the early evening. Light was not so good but you can see it has lots of flowers. This was near the tail end of the bloom though. It was much more densely packed with flowers about a week ago.