All advertisements for Chickasaw plums say that brown rot is very minimal on them. Somehow I doubt that, but could someone give their experience with them and rot. Will you get any fruit without spray?
How do they compare to the asians as far as taste/quality?
Are the named varieties worth the money in comparison to seedlings?
Rot on stone fruit here is out of control even with spray and I am looking for alternatives.
Not P.americana, but I have almost no brown rot on P.angustifolia, Chickasaw plum), either seedling or the Guthrie cultivar. Brown rot was a major reason that I removed or abandoned all other stonefruits. I spray nothing.
Yeah, that’s where I’m at. Tired of losing the rot war. I was going to try some crosses, named chickasaw, as well as a few chickasaw seedlings. How are the seedlings? Are the named versions that much better?
Best I can tell all the other american plums are sour (beach, mexican, ect.).
I have two local Chickasaw selections - one, a small, red-fruited strain that I rescued out of the cow pasture when we moved here in '94. The other is a larger-fruited yellow that I dug a sucker from a thicket growing alongside a dirt road about 3 miles away. Both have suckered, so I have two thickets in close proximity to one another; have grafted ‘Guthrie’ into the yellow on several stems, as early grafts, done 10 or more years ago, have declined and died, but not before I ‘moved’ scions to newer, more vigorous suckers.
Fruits are not exceptionally tart when ripe, nice for eating out-of-hand - though they’re small compared to the other plum cultivars that I planted initially, and certainly less tart - and more edible pulp - than the one seedling beach plum that fruited here for a few years.
I have ordered chickasaw plums from here and been very happy with the results: https://ag.ok.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/2022_catalog.pdf
I think they’re out of stock for the year though. I also have Guthrie which is definitely improved, MUCH larger and more palatable fruit than the seedlings from oklahoma. I also have a native thicket as well.
I’ve grown four improved chickasaws- Guthrie, Odom, Toole’s Heirloom, and Robusto (Japanese and chickasaw hybrid), and had many roadside chickasaws and grown some. The improved cultivars are much bigger with much better flavor and very productive. Brown rot resisitance is high but they aren’t immune. Robusto has been nearly immune, with Guthrie having the most rot. Definitely worth it compared to seedlings.
Are there improved chickasaws that are more resistant to plum curculio than others? Will I be able to get an acceptable harvest without spraying? Thanks.
I can’t cite any studies, but after a few years of experience robusto gets few curc attacks compared to guthrie which seems to get the most. Robusto is also my least favorite in terms of flavor, but is still in a different league both in size and flavor compared to the random seedlings.
Do they taste as good as the asian plums? I have Toka which is a cross, but it’s just as good to me.
That’s a tricky question to answer. They definitely taste different. I’ve only had store bought asian plums that weren’t raised within 1000 miles of here, so I don’t know how locally grown Asian plums would taste. Also, individual tastes vary a lot. Guthrie and Odom are definitely affected by too much water, and Guthrie has to be thinned a lot, removing over 90% of the fruit set, to get reasonable fruit spacing, and even then the quality is inconsistent. With all of those caveats, I like the best Guthries better than any asian plum I’ve had.
Guthrie tastes very much like a peach, to me.
I 100% agree. I thought it was just me that tasted it. They also have that chickasaw flavor, but the peach flavor is unmistakable. I’ve never tasted anything like it, except in peaches.