Early Laxton plum

[BobVance]

I got my first taste of Early Laxton plums this year. They are a mild sweet plum, with some juice, though not runny.

Of the ~8 of so I’ve had so far, the brix ranged from 11.5-14.

Picked yesterday:

Picked today:

A few cracked (see 2 in above pic) and a couple others have been eaten by something, probably ants (at least they were on this one when I knocked it off).

I don’t think it has a strong enough flavor that I would want to use it in preserves, and most of the fruit ripened in a fairly close window. So I don’t think I’d need a large tree. This year’s crop wasn’t that large, considering the tree size, but a couple heavily loaded branches would be plenty.

But, I don’t think my tree is salvageable due to the large amount of black knot close to the ground. It was grafted to a K1 rootstock in 2016 and is up to almost 10 feet tall. But, the black knot goes all the way to the ground, so I don’t know if I can save any of the tree. I stopped pruning black knot off it this spring in hopes of getting a harvest.

Now, I’m planning to try some summer budding to make a copy of it.

[mamuang]

Bob,
For us in New England, we can’t really judge how good our fruit ripened during this stretch of 2 weeks really is. We have had so much rain. The news this evening said MA has had about 9” of rain for the first 12 days of July. More to come, too. My Spring Snow picked today tasted bland.

[murky]

I enjoy it, seems to be the most reliable on my runty old multi grafted tree at my old place. I added it last year here, topworked my Indian Free peach that never fruited over 6 years or so. Also put it on a St Julian sucker, but will probably convert that to another European pear

I enjoy the texture of free stone European pears.