Dapple Dandy Geo Pride and Emerald Drop also have huge crops for me. Consistent year after year. The fact that the pluots are so reliable has me favoring them over plums. Besides the fact of the excellent flavor and much larger size. Yes a few are much like some plums and barely produce. Flavor King has a modest production that rarely needs thinning. I had to thin last year. But it does also produce year after year for me. So does Flavor Finale and Fall Fiesta. Both have produced the last four years for me.
3 sources of information:
-What the company says
-What the scientific literature says (agricultural science, on google scholar)
-What empirical experience says
I do not know myself because Flavor Grenade blooms mid-season for me. I must have had more diversity of pollinizers than I had realized.
Drew is right, when you get good bloom overlap, a lot of these pluots will produce a massive amount of fruit. I think Zaigers did a good job getting around the productivity problems of interspecific. A normal flower set on plums in general is around 5%, and because there are so many flowers, that is a full crop.
That is good to know about Flavor King. I get what to me look like good crops, even in San Diego. Last year was the first time I had to thin them but most years the crop is moderate, just enough to not need thinning.
Unfortunately I would agree that location plays a role in fruit set. Here the Great Lakes buffer the warm spring air with the winter coolness of the water. So much so all my stone fruit many years all bloom at once plums, pluots, peaches, and cherries all overlap here even sometimes at the exact same times.
Pluots nectarines and peaches ( six different cultivars)
Hi Andrew
Do you have Ozark Premiere
My grafts are 4 years old and have blossomed profusely for 3 years but no fruit set, not sure what the reason may be
Dennis
Kent Wa
No I don’t have it. But have my own plums that never produced. Vermont is one. I thought I had every possible type of pollen as I have over 20 different plums. Laroda too is another that only produced one fruit in four years.
Could be your winters are too cold for Laroda, here is quote from Nature Hills nursery: “ Sweet and delicious Laroda Plum Tree (Prunus salicina ‘Laroda’) is a Japanese Plum that is perfect for mild winters and warmer climates! The sweet amber flesh is streaked with red, while the dark purple skin is smooth and pleasing to bite into fresh off the tree!”. Maybe I should try it! Has the fruit been acceptable when it produced?
Dennis
It was unremarkable but others have praised it. First fruits often can be messed up. I know I added it from reports of good flavor.
That’s the same with mine.A graft on Flavor Supreme grew very well,produces a lot of flowers but never has fruited.
I also have as Laroda tree,that hasn’t grown much,maybe not in an ideal spot and fruited one year,just a little.
I have a grafted branch of Laroda . It doesn’t grow much branches wise, but produces fruits.
Perhaps let Andrew know your other nearby plums that may be the key pollinators since you are pretty close in climate zone!
Dennis
Yeah maybe just a pollination issue?
There over 10 cultivar grafted on the same tree, and another 10 more just 10’ away. can’t tell who’s pollinating who.
Sometimes, plums just act weird. I have a Nubiana plum which was blooming two years already. The branches covered with flowers in the spring. It blooms along with the rest plums . It’s on a Frankenstein tree with 30+ plums, EU plum, Japanese, pluot, mirabelle, wild plum, etc. It didn’t bear single fruit. I doubt it is a pollination issue, or other issues. It just has its own temperament.
I do have a lot of plums around Laroda. Plus even if it is a pollination issue I have no where else to put it.
At the very tip of one Sweet Treat branch, I have 3 flowers. They look like they’ll be my only flowers. They’re too far up to tell if the stigma is sticky, but I waited 1 day after opening and have tried to hand pollinate Sweet Treat, Candy Heart, and Flavor King for 2 straight days now. We’re supposed to get some rain tonight and for the next few days, so hopefully I get something.
To update, no fruit set on my Candy Heart, and I’m in my last 15 flowers.
On the bright side, I have about 4 fruits from Cot-N-Candy aprium! This is the first time the fruit has made it this far
Good chart on pollination. Did you get any fruit set on FK?
I checked this morning, and it’s about 10% blooms left and no fruit set. I have a late sweet treat branch (blooms 2 weeks after the other branches have bloomed) and a Flavor Punch that’s just waking up that I’ve been cross pollinating it with.
4-5 remain where the petals have fallen off and a small fruit might set but most of the time the whole flower falls off.
Just going by Alleles type, Candy Heart and Flavor King are made for each other as long as the bloom overlaps (true in your case). By alleles type Sweet Treat has 50% compatibility compared to 100% of Candy Heart. Pluots are strange
Do you know the alleles of Flavor Punch?
Sorry I don’t know, but I think based on this paper most Flavor series has red beauty in their pedigree.