Very good read, thanks to all
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Marcus,
You mentioned Improved Chickasaw rootstock. Do you have a good source?
There is no commercial source that I know of. I just use suckers from my mature trees. If you can get some chickasaw seeds, you can always grow seedlings. I plan to try and save some seeds again this year.
I have some Guthrieās but they are a year or two from producing. I will try it then. In the mean time I will go with the ones from the state nursery.
Thanks again
Hey john, Iāve ordered plum seedlings from West Virginia and Missouri forestry departments in the past few years. So if Tennessee doesnāt have what you need you could maybe try those states as well. I think one of them distributed Americana as opposed to Chickasaw. But they were affordable and good quality, better quality plum trees than Iāve got from some online retail nurseries. It may be too late to get anything this year though.
Thanks for the response Jeffrey,
On the order form they do differentiate between American Plum and Chickasaw so hopefully they are correct. I wonāt be getting them till next year. I will plant them in a permanent site then graft after a year or two. I planted 20 Persimmons this year trying to follow the same plan with the Chickasaws. Itās all a big experiment.
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I hope to post an evaluation of the first N.C. McKibben harvest soon. What I discovered today is that it is very, very susceptible to brown rot. Tooleās Heirloom is as well. But N. C. McKibben is getting it first and is insanely early in the ripening process to be getting it.
Iām doing everything I know to do in terms of orchard hygiene. I sprayed with liquid copper every time I sprayed for curculio. Do any of you know of a good preventative spray for brown rot?
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You might want to check out this thread on brown rot for info on the best fungicide to use. Iāll let you know how my Captan and Bonide Infuse alternating sprays work this year.
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Robusto on the bottom right, Guthrie on the left and center. The flash on the phone is reflecting off the moisture on some of the Robustos, giving them the appearance of some sort of white coating.
Robusto has been productive, cracked little, and tasty. Itās larger than the Guthrie. The Guthries have ranged from ok to excellent. Weāve had a lot of rain this year and many of them taste watery. This issue hasnāt affected Robusto. Guthrie also cracks more than Robusto and isnāt as big. I also should have thinned the Guthrie more. I let it set too many which no doubt isnāt good for the taste or size, though I removed hundreds of plums from a small tree. Overall Iād say I like the best of the Guthries more than the best of the Robusto, but the Robusto has been more consistent with very few bad fruit.
Plum curculio well controlled on all trees with zeta-cypermethrin (Sevin). Huge improvement over using Malathion last year.
Minimal brown rot despite lots of rain and not very open pruning. I used alternating Captan and Bonide Infuse. Definitely a big improvement over the past couple of years.
A second and larger wave of aphids is currently attacking the Guthrie and Odum. Iāve seen some ladybugs and Iām hoping theyāll do the job.
It looks like the ripening order for my six plum trees is going to be Robusto, Guthrie, Guthrie or Odom seedling, Tooleās Heirloom, Japanese seedling, Odom, with a good bit of overlap between them-the Robusto is almost finished and the Tooleās Heirlooms are almost ripe.
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They all look good. Thanks for the report. My Guthrie and Odom were very good this year. No fruit on Tools Heirloom yet.
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Great report. What was the fruit like on the improved Chickasaw seedling? Is it worth spreading around as a new cultivar and itās own name?
Marcus
Probably pretty good.
Itās hard to believe itās a chickasaw from the looks of the tree or fruit, so perhaps I mixed the seed with something else I collected, but I really donāt think so. The tree has reddish brownish greenish spotted leaves, the fruit is a dark burgundy. Good size and flavor on the fruit. Maybe itās a guthrie/odom crossed with cherry plum, prunus cerasifera, which is very common around here.
I will definitely send you some scionwood because I certainly would like some other opinions. If it starts putting out suckers Iāll also send some of those. The tree has grown from a seedling to fruiting in just 4 years, and itās very vigorous. No diseases yet.
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This is the second account I have heard of Guthrie producing purple leafed seedlings with burgundy fruit. There is a new ornamental cultivar from Alabama that started by a seed from a Guthrie growing in a botanical garden. My understanding is that the garden allowed some kids to pick the Guthrie plums under the condition that they bring some of the seeds back. They planted the seeds and ended up with several seedlings that looked like chickasaw plums and three that were red or purple leafed. That patented it and itās being distributed as an ornamental. It seems like I or someone else posted an either further up on this thread or in another thread on this page.
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The Purple Chickasaw variety Iām referring to is called purple pride. My hunch is that the botanical garden had some purple leafed P. caricifera on the property. But it may well be that Guthrie is a P. caricifera hybrid. That would explain the super high fruit quality and the super tiny pits relative to the size of the fruit for a Chickasaw.
Here is the link to the article about the purple leafed Chickasaw cultivar called Purple Pride: Prunus X āPurple Prideā ā The Very First Purple Leaf Plum With Native Genetics | Dave Creech
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Would Chickasaws perform any better in Maryland than an Asian plum? Better than Euro?
They are just generally more disease resistant. However, they tend to have very low chilling requirements and may tend to bloom too early up there. Someone who is growing it in a colder climate would be better qualified to answer that question than me.
I had no idea about that Alabama purple leafed seedling. Hereās a couple of pictures of mine, one showing a typical leaf and fruit and the other showing new growth. 
The fruit in the picture is not ripe-it will get a shade or two darker. Iāve had some nearly ripe off of this tree, but usually the birds and squirrels get after them just before they ripen.
Iāve got two other seedlings that are in the ground but not fruiting. One has languished for a couple of years barely surviving before putting out a lot of new growth this year. Itās leaves look very much like Tooleās heirloom leaves. The other looks like a native chickasaw, and certainly suckers like one. It bloomed heavily this year but set no fruit for unknown reasons.
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Beautiful! I would love to give it a home. Is it showing signs of being productive? I know that purple pride isnāt. Thanks.
Marcus
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I tried for years, with several different European and Japanese hybrid plumsā¦ but only Chickasaws would ever manage to produce fruit that made it to ripening without being consumed by brown rot.
Only have Guthrie and a couple of local native Chickasaws - a red and a larger, yellow-fruited variety. that I transplanted from a roadside thicket and my cowpasture. Iād consider grafting other Chickasaw varieties into my existing thicket, but donāt think Iāll ever bother trying another Euro or Japanese type.
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