These will be ready for harvest in a couple of weeks, there are few hundred of them.
Any luck with your seedlings trial?
Rich those look very delicious. You did a great job of growing them. I wish those were my trees!
WowâŚimpressive stuff. I have a feeling that fruit would ripen wayyy late around here. Do you grow Flavor King? When does that ripen in your climate?
Youâre the most successful growing Candy Heart Rich. Amazing .
The seedling trial is going very well. I tasted one that was riper than the 18 others, a bug ate part of it, brix was 25, flavor was great! It tasted like Candy Heart (syrupy watermelon), with a complex zest to it. The rest should be ready within a couple of weeks.
Flavor King are starting to turn color, they are at least three weeks out, early August.
Great Job Rich. Hopefully one of these days We all will get some woods of your creation!
OKâŚso they are lateâish even in your area. If i get rid of some trees maybe iâll add a Candy Heart in the future.
The biggest challenge in your area, many parts of the country, is cold temperatures when blossoming occurs. They blossom early. A solution might be to graft a stick of what I am working on to dwarfing root stock planted in a large pot with wheels. Wheel it into an enclosure for blossom/frost protection when needed and out for the growing season. Just some thoughts.
How is the taste this year for you?
Rich,
What pollinator do you use?
I have 4yr old Candy Heart. Have had a few fruit.
My Burgundy seems too late to pollinate.
I now have a Sweet Treat next to it first
time for the spring and summer season.
Nadia works as a pollinator but it blooms 5 to 7 days later. Hollywood plum blooms early about the same time as Candy Heart. I planted several Candy Heart seeds a few years ago, one of them blooms even earlier, the others later. The resultant fruit differ, some greatly from the original Candy Heart. The one that blooms earliest has fruit that is very dark purple, almost black, and amber flesh, the flavor is not so good. It tastes sort of like a mealy Santa Rosa plum to me, Iâll keep it as a pollinator. If you grow out a seed from a parent that requires cross pollination, do not expect the fruit to be the same or even similar. You may need to grow 10 to 100 of them for something similar to the original fruit.
Thank you Rich! Very informative (Nadia, Hollywood). Interesting that two Candy Hearts could differ
so greatly in taste (mineâs been wonderfulâjust so few). I donât grow trees from âseeds.â Iâm less advanced than you, but I will let you know if Sweet Treat works as a pollinator this year (I also have a multi-graph with Splash and various other Pluots).
Presently (Feb 17, LA area) both Sweet Treat and Candy Heart are just beginning to wake upâthe first to blossom of 8 trees in my front yard. barry
I had an unusually warm winter this year, so everything is sort of strange. My candy heart is in full bloom right now. The burgundy plum next to it hasnât bloomed a single flower yet. Hoping theyâll overlap but the burgundy is sound asleep.
So far this year, Sweet Treat and Dapple Supreme are in pretty good sync (about 30% bloom). Candy Heart just starting at about 3%. About 20 feet away I have a multi with Splash, Candy Heart and Inca. Each are well over 50% bloom. So hopefully that will spread enough pollen around. Will need Burgundy or Santa Rosa to start to wake up for the second half of Candy Heart. Weâll see.
Do you still prefer Candy Heart over the best of its progeny? Is the similar one worth naming and propagating?
Candy Heart keeps better after peak ripeness, I like the flavor of both. This descendant of Candy Heart makes better jam because it is tangier. The texture of both are similar, the skin has no bitterness either. It is worth keeping and doing well in ground. If ten or more seeds of Candy Heart or other plums were grown out, I am sure the resultant fruit, if any, would be different. In this case âLife is like a box of chocolatesâ,you never know what will happen next.
Take a look at this University of Minnesota website regarding the commercialization and licensing of their patented varieties.
https://mnhardy.umn.edu/commercial-growers/license/license-apples
They donât let just any orchard grow and sell their apples. The orchards have to apply for and be granted a license to legally grow and sell them.
The Honeycrisp was once patented but it didnât require a license to grow it, as far as I know. The breeders seem to be protecting their products and milking every cent they can get out of them. Theyâre protecting them globally, and theyâre protecting the quality of the apple by only allowing orchards where the apple is best adapted to grow and sell them. The breeders can control the supply and keep the prices high.