scottfsmith

Japanese Plums 2014

Scott F Smith
6 years ago

How did your plums do this year? Here is a report on mine.

Overall it was a good year for Japanese plums and I think I have a couple new winner varieties as well as a few more official duds. Rot was greater than usual, we had much more prime rot weather this year, 80's temperatures. Usually we get more 90's-100's to burn it out a bit. I had big wasp/hornet/yellowjacket problems until I hung traps. I will be using traps from now on. This was a relatively light year for pollination due to cooler spring weather. Santa Rosa is how I rate pollination, the fruit set on it varies from little to huge and this year it was very little.

Here is the list in ripening order.

Earli Magic - this is a very good plum, my earliest and excellent taste. Very much a mainstream plum flavor wise, tart and plummy. Had a lot of rot this year, didn't hit with MFF.

AU Roadside - had a couple fruits. It was good flavor but more watery/flavorless than other ones. So, its better than a store plum but not up to backyard orchard standards (at least in my climate). Scheduled for top working.

Flavor Supreme - Only two fruits. These guys have amazing sugars, much sweeter than others. I am finally going to start hand-pollinating this guy to see if I can increase the fruit set - it would be worth the effort if I could get a good crop out of it.

Purple Heart - They are a really great plum, very rich flavor. Similar to Satsuma but larger. Not 100% consistent on flavor/sugars is their only downside.

Lavinia - Excellent plum when fully ripe (red), quenching and with unusual flavor like papaya etc. Too small to ever get very popular in markets. Unfortunately squirrels got the bulk of them this year. Overall I am adding this guy to the winner category for its fantastic flavor.

Shiro - A nice quenching plum. Lots of rot this year like Earli Magic.

Santa Rosa - Same fantastic flavor, but far too few fruits. I may want to try hand pollinating this guy next year as well. I was thinking it had finally settled down into a good pollination pattern as the tree matured, but it looks like that is not the case.

Sweet Treat Pluerry - Decent but not great; high sugars and very crunchy but cloying kiddy-candy flavor. I have a similar problem with Flavor Grenade, I don't like that flavor. Only set 4-5 fruits so I need to give it another year. I didn't let any of them hang super long since wasps were after them.

Satsuma - Excellent as usual. Thinner load this year so bigger plums but same taste.

Mariposa - I only had one; it was a large heart-shaped red-fleshed plum with a mild pleasant taste. Fine but not up to Satsuma or Purple Heart. But, only one fruit so not a good sample.

Laroda - Wow. This is similar to Santa Rosa (surely related) but smaller and more sweet and flavorful. It is turning into a real winner, up in the very top group now. It also comes later than the other plums. I need to make a lot more room for this guy. Like Santa Rosa it didn't set many fruits so it also could use some hand pollination next year perhaps.

Overall, I now put Satsuma, Purple Heart, Earli Magic, and Lavinia down as unqualified winners, and Flavor Supreme, Laroda, and Santa Rosa are winners qualified by weak pollination (very weak in the case of Flavor Supreme). Earli Magic did rot a lot, but it was a bad year for rot and I never hit it with any MFF so I am hoping that will not be a major long-term issue for it.

The European plums again didn't do well at all, I do still have a few varieties left to ripen but the late curculio ravaged most of the varieties. Gotta keep that Surround coverage up longer on them! A few Japanese plums also got wiped out by curc, they were in the same stand as the Euro plums.

Scott

Comments (24)

United Kingdom
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