The plum season is in full swing here, with some trees finishing up and others going strong. This year’s thoughts.
The biggest issue continues to be plum curculio. I got good control in one location with one spray of Sevin (zeta-cypermethrin) and very poor control in my other location with the same one spray. Next year I’ll use two, which I used in the past with good success.
Brown rot has been a non-issue this year, no doubt helped by some dryer weather during ripening. I used two sprays of propiconazole.
Robusto continues to be the most productive plum by far and the one least attractive to PC. It has produced clean fruit at a 25 to 1 ratio over any other tree. Some fruit cracking, but not severe. Flavor has been poor to good. I should have thinned it more; the heavy crop load probably impacted the flavor.
Toole’s heirloom is a very vigorous tree on its own roots. Production hasn’t been great but the plums flavor and size this year have been significantly better than previous years, ranging from good to very good.
Odom set a good crop on a vigorous tree. Flavor has ranged from poor to ok. Lots of PC damage.
Guthrie set a small crop and was ravaged by aphids, again. I could spray for them but eventually the lady bugs show up and get them under control. Moderate PC damage. Flavor good to very good, with the very best having that peachy flavor that’s both different (for a plum) and quite good.
Drag Queen set a decent crop. Most vigorous tree I have. Very attractive to PC and birds. Flavor good to very good. A very pretty tree and very pretty plums when ripe.
Haldog posting his evaluation of Drag Queen reminded me to post mine:
Drag Queen Plum First Impressions: I’m calling this post “First Impressions” because this is the first plum my Drag Queen has ripened for me, and it’s the only one which got pass the birds this year.
Drag Queen is a purple leaf strain which started out as a seedling from the Guthrie Chickasaw Plum (Prunus angustifolia). Presumably the pollen parent is a purple leaf cherry plum (Prunus ceracifera). It came to me as a root sucker from the mother tree which a FB friend of mine in North Georgia owns (Haldog).
My tree is still young and hasn’t bloomed much yet. The jury is still out on whether that’s a product of immaturity or a product of it not getting enough chilling hours in my 9A climate. I will probably have a better sense of that after next spring.
What flowers this tree has produced have been pale pink, nearly white. They are quite large for plum flowers, especially so when one parent is a chickasaw cultivar. Chickasaw plums have very small blooms as a group.
What plums this strain does make are red when little and tend to get eaten by birds due to their color.
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Anything I say about the ripe fruit is based off of one plum, one season. It really is a first impression without much to go by. As you can see from the photo the plum ripened to a rich Burgandy red. To be honest, based on the description from the other person with this strain, I was expecting the fruit to ripen to more of a purple color than it has. (This was a surprise but not necessarily a bad one.) The flesh was a bright yellow which was also a big surprise to me. There is a waxy bloom which had rubbed off this specific plum by the time I got my phone out to take a photo. It was probably about an inch in diameter, maybe a little more. The size was in line with what I got from Guthrie when I had that plum. It’s about the same size as the smaller Sprite plums I’ve gotten and bigger than the Auburn University Cherry Plums I’ve gotten.
This plum was very ripe when I ate it. The flavor was very much what I would expect from a very good red chickasaw cultivar. Texture is soft and super juicy like a soft ripe chickasaw cultivar. Flavor is sweet with just a hint of tart. The flavor was plumy rather than peachy.
I have two grafted babies I plan to sell in the fall if the deer don’t completely eat them to the ground. I can only recommend this variety as an ornamental based on the fact that due to color of immature fruit, I think the birds will get most of the little plums when they are pea size most years even if the tree gets a good fruit set. However, the plum is good for fresh eating when soft-ripe. (Purple leaf plums have a reputation for being very tart as a group, but this plum was quite sweet.)
Have you ever looked into what the cultivar it is the Auburn university P. Angustifolia used in their AU plum breeding program? It lists as Starcher #1 but I can’t find any info on it. Also, if you ever wanna get rid of any seeds from that Drag Queen plum, I’d pay for shipping. A Myrobalan x Chickasaw plum rootstock would make a great plum rootstock for the south. It would be back crossed to Chickasaw I’m sure coming from your orchard so would be 75% P. Angustifolia 25% Myrobalan. Southern plums are the future of the rootstock breeding in the south for peaches with resistance to PTSL and armillaria rot. The last two rootstocks released for down here were Sharpe which is a plum hybrid of unknown parentage found in Florida and MP-29 which is a P. Umbellata x peach hybrid.
I hope to have lots of Drag Queen seed next year, and would be glad to ship it to you @Brettray1981. The most likely pollen parent would be another chickasaw cultivar but I also have a seedling plumcot in my orchard and another purple leaf plum.
A chickasaw cultivar like N.C. McKibben or Toole’s Heirloom. But if you can get a sucker of Algonquin from Joan, that would work the best. Have it on its own root, and it will make babies which would likely make good rootstock for other plums in the future.
I am on the coast near Wilmington NC. The tree is loaded down with fruit every year that we dont get a late frost. This tree blooms early. As Far as chill hours, i would guess the requirement for this tree would be low. 200 to 300 hours.
I have an update and its not good. I went to visit the young couple who bought the property where this tree is located. They sprayed underneath it with roundup to kill the weeds and pretty much killed the tree. It had set runners in the outer perimeter and I dug as many as i could. 7 out of the 11 dug are thriving, plus the 4 year old I have planted in the orchard. Whew!
Oh wow! So sorry to hear! What a loss. If you are willing to part with one of the ones you dug I will be happy to give it a home this winter. The best way to preserve the strain long term would be for my nursery friend Louisiana, Larry Stephenson, to get one. That way it becomes commercially available and gets spread to lots of people. Thanks.
I’m glad you were able to save some runners - so unfortunate to hear that the mother tree may be lost. I also hope you can share some of this material with others so that it can be grown on and help preserve this unique germplasm!
I am interested in planting some Chickasaw plums this fall. Does anyone have any suckers or scions that I could get started with? I would be happy to compensate for the trouble. Thanks!
