I currently have a flavor delight aprium and a flavor supreme pluot. Both of which have been nothing short of rock stars in the orchard. Extremely fast growth from both and dependable crop production. Actually more productive than my other plums and apricots. Which makes me think that I need more of them. Any suggestions for varieties that will do well on the east coast?
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Are you sure you have Flavor Supreme? That pluot has been “supremely” unproductive in the east for every case I heard. I had a big tree for 15 years that never produced much of anything. Maybe you have just the right pollinator for it.
I’m not the biggest pluot/aprium fan but Dapple Dandy has probably been the best for me. Flavor King is great if you are doing regular rot sprays, it is highly prone to rotting.
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Hi Robert, I am curious, which city and state are you located in? I am in Wilmington, DE and I have Flavor Delight, Flavor Supreme, Flavor King, Flavor Grenade, Splash, Dapple Dandy, GeoPride and Emerald Drop. Here is my evaluation of them:
Flavor Delight: Good Production, Good Taste (not very good); obviously much better than anything from stores. 2020 update: Tree developed bad canker this year.
Flavor Supreme: Excellent taste, very shy producer (~15 fruits on a 4 year, 12’ tree with V-shape training). I am curious to know how many fruits you get on it, its training and how much sun it gets. Cracks in rain! specially when it rains close to picking time.
Flavor King: Excellent tasting, good producer, did not suffer from cracking so far. 2020 update: Some minor cracking this year.
Flavor Grenade: Very good tasting, excellent production (best among all), not much cracking, you have to wait till the fruits start turning red before you pick them (for me that’s ~Sep 20).
Splash: Very good tasting (specially if you let it hang long till it starts coloring reddish), production is getting better every year, no cracking. I am top-wroking the tree because of lack of space and because it tastes somewhat similar to GeoPride, but GeoPride is even better.
Dapple Dandy: Excellent tasting if you let the fruits hang till the fruits almost fall on their own (at that point the flesh is very dark), unlike most people say, it is a shy bearer for me (but that’s probably because it is crammed between two other trees and does not get good sun. If I had more space I would definitely add another tree in a sunny spot.) Some fruits suffered from pit cracking, with subsequent rotting.
GeoPride: Excellent tasting, excellent producer, not bad with cracking. 2020 update: Most sensitive pluot to Bacterial Spot. After heavy rain one spring day, >90% of its leaves had symptoms of bacterial spot, it took the tree weeks to recover, but it dropped 80-90% of the fruits!
Emerald Drop: Very bad cracker, fruits crack very early, like 6-8 weeks before harvest time and every single fruit on the tree cracked! Too bad since many people say it is excellent tasting. I am top-working this tree too.
In general, all pluots require hanging for long time on their trees to get the best flavor, which makes them subject to critters and the elements. Also, their crops don’t ripen uniformly over a short time period (with the exception of FK and perhaps FG), which annoys me, because I have to wait long between pickings and it is very hard to wait for the next time you eat such wonderful fruit.
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Hey Ahmad: You’re making me want to replant my pluots. I am regrafting the best. You also must be doing a great job with culture in general and rot sprays in particular.
Nice work my man…!! Your fruit sounds better than mine. I have a hard time growing good Flavor Grenade.
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@fruitnut This praise coming from the Fruit Master makes me very proud Steve. I would suggest you give DD another shot, since you have not regarded it highly before, but I find perfectly ripe ones in the same league with FK/FS.
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Yeah, it is flavor supreme. It’s really odd as well. Both flavor supreme and delight are the first trees to flower with no insects about and they still set fruits. Being in the brown rot belt, advice from others is almost critical to saving time and money. Thanks for the advice. (Especially for pointing out the California connection in my pluerry thread.)
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I’m a little west of Leesburg, VA (6b/7a). It’s pretty loaded this year (maybe 50). FS is a spreading tree and has so far done nicely on it’s own. I will be taking down some size this year. It grows like a weed and has become very big quickly(15’). Mostly full sun. Cracking is by the year. Brown rot is my greatest stone problem. Which brings me to my question. Which of the varieties you have do you see the least amount of brown rot problems?
Thanks for posting this! I’m 3.5 hours south east from you and I been wondering for a while if anyone on the east coast had any of this fruit trees! I also would like to know if anyone has Spice Zee nectaplum and Cot n candy aprium on the east coast and if they would do good here as well.
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Thanks for posting about this!
Could you post any pictures of the fruit. Like the others I’m very skeptical of it being Flavor Supreme if it sets heavily. FS doesn’t. The only time I’ve had full set is with hours of hand pollination on a small tree. The flowers aren’t attractive. The bees will beat the other varieties to death before spending time on FS.
The tag may have said FS but that doesn’t mean it’s FS.
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My tree is very vigorous too, it is the most vigorous pluot that I have (a little bit more vigorous than DD, which is quite vigorous too). Brown Rot is very well under control with my spray regimen, the only pluot that had rot last year was DD and only in the fruits with split pits, which cannot be controlled by spraying. I spray fungicide (Infuse or Bonide Fruit Tree & Plant Guard)/insecticide with NuFilm every 2-3 weeks starting late April (when Plum Curculio starts showing up) till 3-4 weeks before harvest. With that, BR is really insignificant across the board (not only pluots). I also bag my fruits when they start coloring up, to protect from birds, but it may be helping a little with disease and insects.
@fruitnut I have a different theory for FS’s lack of production. I think it is lack of enough sun/heat in the few weeks following pollination/fruit set. Last year I saw a lot of tiny wild bees working my FS (more than any other pluot)! This year I was away during bloom so can’t tell about pollinators, however, initially I had a very good fruit set, but then 99% of the fruitlets dropped over the following few weeks, which I think was because of cold weather and/or lack of sun, both conditions necessary for light-dependent and non-light dependent biochemical reactions used to make sugars (the source of energy and structural material) by the tree. I know one can argue that the dropped fruitlets were not pollinated, yet, this would not account for lack of fruit set despite hand pollination (experienced by @scottfsmith, me and others). To support my theory, people who reported good fruit set with FS are mainly in CA and @Jwsemo in MO (Flavor Supreme pluots - #10 by Jwsemo), both places have better sun/warmth than the north east at pollination/fruit-set time. Having said that, FS may poorly attract some types (or the more common types) of bees, which could be the cause of poor set in your greenhouse for instance, where you have a single type of bees.
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You are correct. My experience is only with bumblebees and honeybees. There could be other pollinators that could account for Robert’s results. Thank you for broadening my thinking…!!
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Maybe one issue is how we are defining loaded. My FS I had slowly topworked many varieties to so it was maybe 1/5th of a tree and I would get maybe 5 fruits on it before I took it out. So that would be 25 on a full tree which is not far from your 50 fruits. But, I would call that a very bad set for plums! My Satsuma and Early Magic are each less than 12’ tall and have maybe 300 plums on the EM and 500+ on the Satsuma right now. That is what I call a “loaded” set. You are also doing better in Virginia in terms of the warmth as @Ahmad points out which could be the 25 vs 50 difference.
Re: rots, I used to have horrible problems with pluots when I was 100% organic… it was very hard to control. But now I use Indar and like @Ahmad have no problems with rot on pluots or any other fruit for that matter. I re-added Flavor King last year for that reason; when I grew it years ago it had exceptional flavor when it did not crack (i.e. most years), and it always set well, but I removed it due to its exceptional rotting. It is going to be a few more years before it is fruiting but I am already looking forward to it 
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Actually broke this branch trying to get these picts. Here is the flavor supreme in question. Although tag mix up is possible, I think its the real FS. There is actually closer to 100 fruit set, but said 50 because half will need removed. You can see the packs of fruit. All the branches look like that. It is somewhat near the septic drain field which may be helping it. Potted tree third year in the ground.
@fruitnut
@scottfsmith
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Anyone tried Spring Satin? Heard it was a good east coast pluot.
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OK, that is pretty impressive. One thing to warn though, I did have better set the first few years and it steadily shrunk. If you keep getting good sets like that you either have better weather or better pollinators than I do.
Spring Satin grows very well, no problems with set, rots, or cracking, but I had problems with ripening it well. The tops would get squishy while the bottoms were underripe. If you don’t let it ripen enough it is not very tasty. The bits that are perfectly ripe are very good though, similar to Flavor Supreme in fact in taste.
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The flowers on FS open super early with some of the apricots. It is halfway through it’s flower cycle when the other plums begin opening. There are no insects out at that time that I can see and I really have no idea how that thing is setting fruit. Just happy that it is.
I experienced uneven ripening on a lot of trees. That went away as the trees got older.
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Flavor Supreme in northern California, notice how round they are. I have 2 and 1/2 flavor supreme trees and they usually load perfect here as to not have to thin. Its pluots are as good as Favor King, most everyones top flavored pluot, outstanding fruit!
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I’ve got a quad-graft pluot from Raintree, and it hasn’t set a single blossom in the 3 years I’ve had it in ground here in Richmond, VA. The Tomcot isn’t much better.
Both just bloom so early that cold snaps and lack of pollinators cause problems. If you want to try, get something in a spot that either wakes up late or blooms late IMO.