Japanese Plums 2014

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

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flowerchild59

3 years ago

thanks everyone for the reports. Lots of great information is really appreciated.

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Comments (24)

mrsg47
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Hi Scott great report as always! Will there be a report on the Euro plums, even though the year was not good? I can agree to that! Mrs. G
RobThomas
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
I love the yearly reports, Scott. Late freezes killed the blooms on the two trees that flowered. I put in Byron Gold and Spring Satin this past winter. Hoping that they'll be "winners". I have heard good things about Spring Satin.
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Scott F Smith
Original Author
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Mrs G, I only have two Euro plums with good fruit set. I will add something on them if they make it.

Rob, I left off Spring Satin. It is ripening just when the squirrels hit their peak activity so it has been a problem getting fully ripe fruit. I still did get some this year. They were good but not uniformly so: some had good flavor and some didn't have much flavor. So, its definitely a decent plum to have but it has not been consistently good. I also left off Weeping Santa Rosa, it is similar to but better than Santa Rosa - sweeter and more flavor.

Scott
Tony
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Nice report Scott. I am with you on hand pollinate Flavor Supreme. They are very sweet and good.

Tony
JesseSt
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Good year for plums up here in z5 inland Maine. Many of my 7-4 yr trees have their first good crop this year. Finished up picking the Underwoods and Opals already, most of the Santa Rosa and some Burbank are ripening and pickable. Underwood, smallest of the bunch, has nice apricot qualities, Opal has a delicate flavor and nice meaty texture. Santa Rosa is the favorite so far for flavor. I'm impressed with the fruit set on my 4th leaf Superior- 60+ fruits starting to blush! And I hear this one is also really good eating...also waiting on Vermont Plum, Stanley, Kahinta, Alderman. I did get to try a Purple Heart at a friend's and thought it was quite tasty as well.
franktank232
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Excellent review. I'm excited for Satsuma next year. Should have a lot of blooms. Starting to think Flavor Supreme is the best pluot out there. I also don't care for some of the "candy" flavored pluots...I'd toss Emerald Drop and Splash in that category of pluot (FG). Both for me were just sugar. A few of them are fine to eat, but i couldn't imagine eating more of a few of them before getting sick of it. I had a Flavor King yesterday. A single fruit. Seems early for here. My son loved it. It did have some splitting on the top. A good late pluot.

Very excited to try some of these you rate highly.

You still eating Mericrest? Any hints at how its going? Rot?

You must have the best tasting squirrels in the county!
fruitnut Z7 4500ft SW TX
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Frank:

I've cut down both Splash and Emerald Drop. Just like you, not enough flavor. My Flavor Supreme this yr were superb. Better than any plum I've ever had. Even Scott likes the extra sweetness and rates it much sweeter than the others. The pluots, in my experience, are sweeter than plums they just need some flavor also.

My favorite plums are all pluots: Flavor Supreme, Geo Pride, Flavor King, Honey Punch, Flavor Finale, and Flavor Treat, all dark skinned.

The only plum I've got left is Burgundy. It's good eating but mainly for pollination. Laroda was one of the last plums I removed. It's good but not great.
rayrose
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
I only had two plums that fruited this year and I've already posted a picture of my Santa Rosa. I got over 100 lbs of plums from that one tree, and 128 lbs from
AU Rubrum. I believe that both of these varieties do much better in hot weather climates. Before this year, I never liked the taste of SR, but this year the tree came into its own and the fruit was really good. It's an excellent pollinator and if you're going to grow plums or pluots, you really should have this tree.
This year I planted Black Ruby, Spring Satin, Flavor Grenade, Flavor Queen, and Flavor Rich, and am anxious to see how they perform.
skyjs
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Hollywood is the most reliable Asian plum for me. My neighbors had a pluot that I budded in last year that is fantastic-maybe flavor supreme-I don't know. The tree is 50 years old and I bet they don't know either. I budded in Shiro, Beauty, and a large purple spherical one from a neighbor this year. I also have a nice small spherical yellow one that tastes good and is early but it was supposed to be Shiro and it's not.
John S
PDX OR
Scott F Smith
Original Author
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Frank, Mericrest were all gone a long time ago. They sure were good. Now I am eating Carolina Gold, Early Crawford, Sanguine Tardeva, and Athena peaches. All are very tasty, its a great week for peaches here. The Mericrest got little rot but its been getting worse in the orchard lately due to all the rains. I should do another MFF spray.

I found Flavor King just as good as Flavor Supreme (and very similar in taste), but it had too many rotting and splitting problems and it was also in a bad spot so I eventually removed it. It did set a lot better than FS.

Scott
myk1
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Extremely few flowers on my Santa Rosa. Only 1 undersized plum made it close to harvest. I have no idea what took it. It has taken off so I'm hoping winter is nicer and it decides to have full sized fruit next year.

Shiro produced great. I experimented with extremely early thinning trying to get bigger fruit. I don't think I thinned enough, it still dropped. But thinning out the early small fruits did help.
Zero rot with the ones in bags. A lot of rot outside.
Taste was hit and miss. I'm still learning what works best with the plums including when to pick. I had some that were very good.

I didn't get enough to make wine and eat so I just ate.
alan haigh
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
I wonder if fruit set isn't more complicated than flowers forming and being pollinated. My Santa Rosas were light this year as were Early Magic (for the first time since it started bearing). During bloom both were well tended by various native pollinators as usual but fruit didn't set well although it did with other varieties such as Shiro, Methely, Fortune and especially Queen Rosa. Satsuma was lighter than usual which only meant it needed less thinning.

I had the same kind of variability with my Euros. Sometimes with the same variety in different trees.

This is not a new phenomena for me and I see it all the time. No relation to previous seasons crop either.

The longer I do this the more I believe that much of the workings of these trees is more complicated than we realize. It is always comforting to feel you have things completely figured out but maybe more interesting to know you never will.

Scott, is your theory that the bees neglected the lighter cropping trees? Why one year and not another? Maybe I'm missing something, what is your theory? I've never noticed one variety of plums less tended by pollinators than another, but will look more closely in the future.

I have a couple of sites this year where the plum trees flowered profusely and there was almost no fruit set at all, but I was not there to witness the population level of pollinators. The weather should have been fine. Never happened at either site before.
mamuang_gw
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Scott, Thank you very much for the report. Always look forward to reading your annual fruit reports.

Myk1 - thank you for sharing your bagging plum method. I bagged my Shiro after reading your advice. It worked out very well, only two cracked, the rest are fine. Some are still ripening on the tree. No rot yet. This is its first year of fruiting.
nyRockFarmer
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
I assume nectar properties from any given tree will vary from year to year just like it does for the fruit. What I'm less sure about is variations in fragrance. Bees will first discriminate based on fragrance. Then they will discriminate based on the sugar content of nectar they have sampled. They learn which sources have the best quality nectar and travel greater distances to those sources, often passing by the less interesting sources.

I was surprised when my asian plums blossomed after the deep freeze. However, the flowers were dull and sickly looking. From a distance it didn't look like there were any blossoms. Not too surprisingly, there was no fruit set. The Stanley had good blossoms and set a few, but the fruit vanished shortly after. That proves euro plums are little more cold hardy than the asian plums.
bob_z6
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Thanks Scott. I'm always excited to see these annual review posts and am looking forward to when I can contribute more to them myself.

Superior (2nd year in-ground tree, after a year in a fabric pot)- It set a heavy crop, probably more than I should have left on it. Even so, the plums I was able to sample (animals got ~17 of 20) were very good. This one got ohs and ahs from the family and was uniformly approved. It was sweet, juicy and flavorful, though not freestone.

Ripe: 8/14-8/16, with 16.5-18 brix and medium size.

Bubblegum plum (Toka)- (1st year in ground, after 2 years in fabric pot). It set a light crop of 5-6 plums, and I was able to get 4 of them. I thought it had a very interesting taste, but I'm not sure it will appeal to everyone. The flavor has a strange artificial component, which reminded me a bit of the Sweet 16 apple, though not as good (SS is great). It has a similar brix level as Superior, but is much drier. It is also much smaller and mostly freestone.

Ripe: 8/17-8/19, a few days after Superior. 16-18.5 brix, with small size.

The Satsuma located right next to the Superior bloomed quite a lot, but didn't set any fruit. I also had a few blooms from AU Rosa, AU Producer, and Lavina (a newly planted very large tree from Cummins), but none of them set fruit.

Neither Superior, nor Bubblegum had any disease problems, unlike my peaches which are really getting hit by brown rot. I also didn't see any PC or other insect damage on either plum. I did spray 3 times with Surround, but that didn't stop my apples and peaches from getting hit pretty hard.

All of my Euro plums were too young this year.

In this pic from 8/14, you can see a juicy Superior plum being cut up, with a slightly under-ripe (15 brix and sour) Bublegum plum already quartered on the plate.
hairmetal4ever
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Both Satsuma and Purple Heart have been hard to source for me. Elephant Heart is all over, but that is, I assume, not the same one.

Who sells them? I thought I found a source for PH last year, but can't remember who it was, so never ordered one.
JesseSt
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Purple Heart is available from Fedco, although they don't list it every year. I'm sure they could supply scionwood in the early spring.
bob_z6
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
I haven't seen Purple Heart anywhere. I ordered the Satsuma from Burnt Ridge in 2012. I've also seen it at Rolling River, though it appears to be out of stock at the moment.
Scott F Smith
Original Author
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Most years Fedco has Purple Heart. I think I got it from them as scionwood, which they have every year. Dave Wilson produces Satsuma and several DWN resellers stock it (Bay Laurel, Sanhedrin, Peaceful Valley, etc).

In general on my winners list DWN resellers have all but PH and Lavinia, and Cummins has Lavinia.

Harvestman, I don't have a pollination theory. I do see pollinators on the trees. I had always assumed there was something in the flowers that were not accepting the pollen even though it was there, but given others' success with hand pollination it doesn't appear to be that. I will know more once I see how hand pollination works for me next spring.

Scott
bob_z6
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
I thought it was interesting how much bloom the plums have. I suppose it could be leftover surround, but I think most of it was naturally occurring, as my last coat of surround was applied more than two months before.

Here are two Bubblegum plums from 8/19. I wiped one off on my shirt.
Tha Pranksta
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
No plums for me this year. They all aborted. You guys have some really beautiful pictures though. :-\ I guess there's always next year if I can keep the squirrels away.
JesseSt
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
We are into the Superior plum crop now. 4th leaf tree loaded with big fruit, what's not to like? A bit of cracking, and flavor-wise, juicy, sweet and peach-like but a bit bland in comparison to the Santa Rosa we finished a few days back. Toka is just starting to ripen a few, this 5th leaf tree has a nice crop on it. Smallish fruit, aromatic 'candy' flavor meaty and freestone. Should be a great cooker.
Tried the first Vermont Plum (St Lawrence Nursery selection) this morning and it had a nice flavor and texture like a mango.
Another tree from the same source was mis-IDed, labeled as 'Northern Blue', this tree made smallish yellow blushed red plums. Fully ripe they were okay eating, but did make a great batch of preserves with them.
insteng
6 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Hopefully I will have some plums next year. The last two years my trees have been loaded then they got caught in a late freeze. Next year the trees should be good size so hopefully I can get a lot of them.

Japanese Plums 2014

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