Favorite Euro Plums

I am so glad it payed off for you. It is a very reliable prune plum. All of them I grow get good sugar, although, somehow my Valors are not up to par this year. They are more loaded than I intended. I usually lose a third of the crop to PC, but not this year.

Thanks. I followed your advice on growing Castleton. Do not disappointed one bit. I am now waiting for Coe’s Golden Drop to ripen.

I also have several questionable “Middleburg” and a couple of French prunes to try and compare.

If you have similar results to mine, it will be the years the other plums don’t bear that you REALLY appreciate Castleton.

I just had my last one today. I have been surprised how similar they taste compared to Golden Transparent Gage, its a larger and milder version of that plum. By its shape it could be the cross of a Gage and a prune plum.

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I saw Castleton listed as zone 4. Has anyone in the St. Paul/N. Wisconsin area tried growing it? I’m always on the lookout for plums that will grow this far north.

I’ll need to count two more weeks for my Coe’s to ripen then.

You said Middleburg and Epineuse will eventually turn blue. They started from green to light yellow and now pinkish with purple blush. Just trying to find out how blue will they be before they are ripe.

They should be all purple when ripe, at least they are for me. I am starting on my Middleburg now, its my latest plum. For not having sprayed them since June they are doing really well on the rot.

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Mam, those are late. My Italian prune plum ripens the first week in sept. As do most of my euro plums. Are these grafts?

Mrs.G.,

I go by @scottfsmith’s ripening time. Scott is about 2 weeks ahead of me.

This is my first year having all E plums. Mirabelle Parfume de Sept is starting to ripen now.
Middleburg/Epineuse just start to turn purple’ish.

Scott said his Coe’s is a late plum. Mine would even be later.

The good thing about bagging is when the plums drop, they drop inside the bags. So far, I can afford waiting until they start dropping. I like my E plum soft and sweet so I can wait.

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Our Epineuse are mostly purple when ripe, could be the temperature difference, they were good this year. The Empress are ripening, very bland, likely won’t even pick them, they didn’t ripen well in the cool wet summer. Seasons over for us here as the Empress are the latest ripening. I can use the rest.

Eric

Same with my Empress and Valors. They are my staple plums because I have room to store them after peaches wind down- this year they aren’t worth picking and I don’t’ know why. Trees I manage on sites with finer soil- so presumably even more water, produced much better plums of these varieties. Why were my earlier plums of fine quality (before they split) and these later ones so sucky? Excess rain has been gone for 45 days and plums have never been bothered by too much water beyond cracking in the past- they get up their sugar even on sites that over irrigate their lawns and therefore the fruit trees in them.

If mine are indeed Epineuse, they just start to have purple blush. So, it could be a week or more before they turn more purple. Several of them cracked from the rain a couple of weeks ago but the fruit have not rotted or dropped so I let them there.

My Parfume de Septembre is ripening now. It’s mirabelle so the size is very small.

Coe’s Golden Drop may be the latest one to ripen for me. Not sure when they will ripen. They have an impressive size as they are larger than my other plums, E or J.

PdS… we want photos and taste descriptions! How do you like them?

Do you thin them? My prune plums were bland as well, so I dried all of them. The slight tartness of the skins gives some flavor after drying. They taste at least as good or better than commercial prunes.

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Yes I thin them, although I had expected to lose a third of the crop to PC and it didn’t happen so they were a bit heavy, but not enough to be the cause for the total lack of sugar- a lot of poorly thinned earlier plums were excellent.

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I didn’t thin mine at all. I wanted to see what the crop would be like, but I wasn’t expecting it to be mostly cool and cloudy the last 3 weeks of ripening. I wasn’t sure if thinning would have made a significant difference. My Honeycrisp apple was well thinned and the fruit has been incredibly bland off the tree this year.

Matt et al,
Harvested a lot MdS today. Some dropped to the ground. Most still hung on well when I picked them. When ripe, they have pale yellow color with red specks on the skin.

They are small, about the size of a medium cherry. It tastes sweet, just sweet. To me, it is nothing exciting but sweetness. My husband said sometimes he tastes a hint of perfume after taste. I do not. Brix is between 20-27, many in the 22 range. In my zone 6a, this is the time it starts to ripen.

I prefer Castleton to PdS. Maybe, I like a prune plum to a mirabelle.


Prolific bearer.


Yellow with red specks.

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All the mirabelles tasted that way to me … thats one reason why I got rid of them. They are meant for cooking, not eating. They are supposed to be amazing for cooking, maybe cook some up!

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Thank you, Tippy, for this excellent report.

Are they at all juicy?

Gummy texture or juicy melting texture?

Fascinating!