Beach plums

Very impressive!

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100% takes on my BP multigraft, it should produce a kaleidoscope of fruit next year.

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just put in 2 mini plum trees i got from hartmanns. zone hardy to z3 so should do well here. wonder if they are a dwarf version of beach plums? doesnt say on their site. supposedly very productive and grows to only 6ft. might have to try grafting some different varieties on them once they get big enough.

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I took a look on their webpage, the tree that they call a “Mini-Sweet Plum Tree” does not look like a Beach Plum to me.

…they also have a tree they call “Plum Berries,” which does look like a Beach Plum. (Also, in the description they say it is “Prunus maratima,” which removes all doubt.)

https://hartmannsplantcompany.com/retail/product/mini-sweet-plum-tree/

https://hartmannsplantcompany.com/retail/product/plum-berries/

I wish companies wouldn’t try to rename fruit trees. Beach Plums are not that rare and the name describes them perfectly already.

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Has anyone here tried adding a little bit of salt as fertilizer for Beach Plums? In the Philippines where we grow coconut in the mountain areas, using a little bit of salt as fertilizer have increased the yield by three folds! Coconuts are coastal species that gets an infusion of salt. The same with Nipa palm. Both can be planted in areas far from their native habitats and so using salt has increased their yields. Perhaps it might be the same with Beach Plums, for those doing their graduate thesis, this might be a good study to try!

I bought nongrafted seedlings of Beach Plums from Oikos and so will be trying to use salt on them perhaps next year when they’ve grown bigger.

Of course using salt for grafted Beach plums is a different matter, as it really depends on the rootstock if they’re salt tolerant or not.

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I think a small amount could help and does help many things. It does of course depend on the salt. You can see a little bit of what I do in this old thread Soil Secrets

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Update on my BP multigraft, hopefully these will prove hardy here and I can try some fruit next season from these selections…

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I am having mixed success with beach plums this year. I have three bushes, two of them were hit very hard by plum curculios and dropped most of their fruit. For some reason the third tree in the row was barely touched and is completely covered in immature fruit. None of the trees received any kind of spray or treatment this year.

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Beach Plum day is approaching.

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Where are you located. I found some wild ones yesterday on Long Island and none where ripe. There was one in a park that I use to get fruit from until someone cut it down. That one ripend n September.

I am in Virginia near DC, so probably at least a few weeks ahead of you.

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Bring in some fruit from my trees, these samples are from 3 of the nicest…I like the color variations, they have different flavors as well. Some broken branches from the fruit load!

Going in a batch of jam!

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I bought Jersey and Premier from Raintree a few years ago. The plants are pretty big now and flower but I’ve never gotten a single fruit. The blooms seem to miss each other as they bloom right after one another - but Raintree says they pollinate one another :confused:

I could send you some scions to help pollinate if you graft, just remind me in late winter.

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That’s very kind of you. I’ve never tried grafting, but that may be a solution. Raintree offered to send me two new plants, not sure if maybe one of my older ones was an accidental seedling variety (do they even offer seedlings?). I’m going to try to gauge the bloom of the new plants they send next spring, but could be a waste of a lot of time. Thanks I’ll keep you in mind :):slight_smile: Very kind.

Beach plums have been blooming about a week


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Beach plums grow naturally on salty sand dunes within a few hundred feet of the water. I’m not aware of them growing naturally inland and yet they grow so beautifully in Kansas.

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I was at the beach last week and on my walk saw 25 Beach Plum trees with fruit. There were many more that I did not count. None of them had the density of fruit like the Cornell picture. I saw additional ones with no fruit so they may not fruit every year. The largest tree I saw was 8 ft high and 10 ft wide. I’ll try sampling them when they ripen but last year the birds ate every ripe plum so there were none for me to try. There are many Autumn Olives in the same area but again the birds eat them all so I haven’t sampled any.

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My seedlings are variable in productivity, there are some which bear annually, and other that do not. Also different colors, flavors, growth habit, etc.
I have not sprayed at all this year, and my best bushes are once again loaded with fruit that looks nice and clean. Most of my other plums did not fare so well with our cool wet spring. This points to one of the true values of this plant for me- it is a pretty bomb-proof prunus.
Some of the grafts which I was excited to see bloom this past spring have seemed more pest-susceptible, ie, curc. These were improved cultivars and numbered selections from the mid-atlantic area. Hopefully next year they will do better, if not: adios!

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Here’s a use for beach plum that surprised me. I went to the Blue Point brewery a few days ago and one of the beers they had was beach plum beer.
The third from the left is the beach plum beer. Second from the left is apple.

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