How do you remove the pits to make the jam?
I’ve found the best way is to wash them, remove the stems, then crush them in my fist over the pot and hold onto the pit which clings to maybe 10-25% of the flesh depending on the size of the plum.
One has to be a little mindful to make sure not allow the stray broken tip of a pit to make it into the pulp.
ickkk!
This is why, if I had to do it over, I’d only grow freestone fruit
I find it a bit satisfying, but I prefer the taste and convenience of eating free-stone European plums to clingstone Japanese plums.
The net yield on Beauty is hard to beat. The tree bears heavily and reliably for me.
Buy a plum pitter.
I have not found a plum pitter that won’t go splat! with Asian plums
Oops sorry L didn’t think of those.
I tried Murky’s method, it is messy too. I liked more to use slightly underripe and still firm plums to cut around the pit.
It’s my favorite Asian Plum.
So glad I have a this year’s graft. Been following this thread since a few days ago.
Dax
Pick them today, one was overripe but this one seemed about ripe. The yellow one was Shiro.
Beaty weighed 2.82 oz with brix at 12 and Shiro weighed 1.4 oz.with brix at only 8.
Beauty tasted sweet and very juicy. Shiro tasted like water ( some water may tastes better). With the size and taste. Beauty won this beauty contest handsdown.
Here’s the bad news, both varieties showed rot. The overripe Beauty was obvious. The one in the picture had a spot that looked like it would be rot if not picked today.
My first 2-3 years of having Shiro, the fruit were clean, no rot, no bugs. This year pests and rot have found them. I am converting Shiro to other varieties next spring ( have already started the project but the rot accelerates it.)
Beauty is a sport of Santa Rosa.
According to Luther Burbank, who selected Beauty in 1911, it is “the product of a very complicated heredity including several species.”
Interesting
I’ve always read otherwise on plant tags.
Yes, people often refer to Beauty as an early Santa Rosa type, but, according to the book “Luther Burbank’s Plant Contributions” by W. L. Howard (1945), who studied original Burbank’s records and cites them, the selection of Beauty was an independent process involving crosses of multiple plum species. I myself was surprised when I read this.
Hi Tony,
How is your Beauty plum doing? Now it should be a mature tree, can you tell me how tall it is and how much space it occupied? I ordered one and don’t know what to expect .
I’ve grown Beauty plums for a few years now in the Pacific Northwest from a graft on an over 30 year old Santa Rosa tree that also has Red Heart, Shiro, and Italian Prune grafts on it. Beauty is very productive most years, normally requiring extensive thinning to get normal sized fruit, unlike Santa Rosa, which produces only a few plums most years. I’m quite disappointed in the quality of Beauty plums; they have a decent flavor but the texture is only good for a very short period of time between the too sour/hard and the bag of juice stages. Santa Rosa has better flavor and much better texture than Beauty but is unproductive in my climate. I can’t believe that Beauty is a sport of Santa Rosa because the two varieties are so different in both flavor and texture.
Beauty is not a sport of Santa Rosa. According to Luther Burbank’s notes, Beauty is “the product of a very complicated heredity including several species.”
Which plum varieties grow well (and taste good) in your experience?