Thanks Dan. What varieties did well for you in terms of taste and production? How many chill hours do you get usually?
At least from what I see, Vallejo gets significantly more chill (760 last year Vs 472) than San Jose. Nevertheless, I’m curious about your experience with different varieties.
Anyone planting Euro Plums in New Jersey? I planted a multi tree about 4 years ago and it has yet to flower on any grafts. from the looks of the wood this year it might not again but I am holding out hope for the upper branches.
From memory, I am growing:
several Mirabelle cultivars
a few different prunes
a few Asian plums
a half dozen inter-specific hybrids, pluots, plumcots
a half dozen damsons & gages
I get good to excellent crops off of everything except Flavor Supreme Pluot has been lagging but it is still somewhat young.
All of the plums grow well and all produce fruit here one to three years after grafting. Very little disease pressure although a few of the trees are aphid magnets. Flavor is pretty subjective although I will say that my least favorite plum is Flavorosa due to its tartness but it is one of the first fruits of the season and my wife likes tart so it stays.
The Euro plums tend toward the syrupy sweet side of the flavor spectrum. Bradley’s King of the Damsons is great for fresh eating if you want a Damson in your collection. All of the Mirabelles are excellent and taste about the same to me. Bavay’s green gage and Cambridge gage are pretty phenomenal desert plums.
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@lordkiwi I have several euro plums in Ohio and and all took around 5-6 years to produce fruit, with no flowers for 3-4 years. You’re getting close, which varieties are on the tree?
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ROSY GAGE, EARLY LAXTON,ITALIAN, STANLEY ,SENECA.
It was a Multi graph tree from Raintree.
Nice. I don’t know about Seneca, but the others are all very productive once they finally get going.
I’m right across the river in PA and have had my Raintree Stanley plum flower and produce about 10 plums last year. The tree was planted 2016.
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All my E plums are on Marianna 2624. They set fruit in their 3rd year and since. I did bend branches and my trees get sun from dawn to dusk.
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Mine went in the ground in spring 2017.
Udhay, I do not think I can give you a reliable answer to that question. I do not have a weather station, am in a microlimate as @Stan mentions, and the closest weather stations are either not available to GetChill or intermittent. With that said, here are some relative metrics: (1) I get ‘Bing’ to set something in all but the very warmest winters; (2) My ‘Blenheim’ started blooming about Feb. 19; (3) I would estimate that I get more chill than San Jose airport and less than Andy Mariani’s orchard. If you are in one of the historic stone fruit growing areas of San Jose, I suspect chill will not not limit your ability to grow Euro. plums.
My ‘Pearl’ has suffered a series of misfortunes over the years and the tree has never made it big enough for me to give an accurate report. I also have a young ‘Golden Transparent Gage’ that I think will probably fruit for the first time this year and so also is something about which I cannot give much useful information yet. Everything else seems to bloom OK and set has mostly been determined by whether the conditions during bloom are good, i.e. warm enough for bees to fly, not raining, good overlap. Coe’s generally sets the most poorly.
The Euros. I think mostly on Marianna and Myro 29c. The ‘Parfume de Septembre’ came from Raintree and I think it may have put some European plums on St. Julian. I don’t think I have any on Citation. One of my many afflicted ‘Pearl’ specimens was on Krymsk and that one was a very weak grower. Krymsk has been erratic for me compared to Myrobalan and Marianna.
I put the ‘Bavay’ ‘PdS’ and ‘Coe’s’ in at the same time I put in a ‘Santa Rosa’ plum. The ‘Bavay’ and ‘PdS’ fruited the same year the ‘Santa Rosa’ did and the ‘Coe’s’ the year after. They were all pretty solid trees when they went in the ground–I think the ‘Bavay’ and ‘Coe’s’ were from Trees of Antiquity–so probably in their 3rd or 4th leaf.
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Thanks @Vohd. If you are getting Bing to set fruit most years then you are close to 700 ch, probably similar to @danchappell. I did plant a Bavay this year on Citation (Thanks to @Stan’s photos 
) which is slowly leafing out now. I’ll probably grow out some scaffolds and try budding 1-2 varieties in the summer. I wanted to gather what varieties are reliable here. I know French Improved prune does well here. Looks like PdS is another one I should try.
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California has a climate comparable to the Mediterranean states.
I’ve been managing orchards with E. plums in the mix in 3 states of the NYC region for over 25 years and include several varieties in my own orchard and bearing age nursery. Often commercial CA varieties also thrive here as do those developed by Cornell.
Seneca was one of the early varieties I tried, because it was touted as being resistant to brown rot, which didn’t pan out. It is very high quality but not a reliable cropper, perhaps because of incompatibility with some other varieties. E. plum compatibility issues seems inadequately understood. These days I like having at least two varieties on any tree and 3 in the orchard mix.
Stanley is the standard which I generally avoided because it is not highly esteemed for its fruit quality, it seems to fall off the tree often before achieving an amber color and the high brix required to be a world class E. prune plum
My two staple E. plums are Castleton and Empress, because they reliably produce crops at a relatively young age of very high sugar. Castleton is considered self fruitful, and I haven’t tested Empress, but both bear more consistently for me than other high quality prune-plums I grow. But reliability varies site to site- these just seem to be reliable at more sites than others. Precosity is also important.
Valor is also on my list as is De Montfort for early fruit. https://arboreumco.com/collections/european-plums/products/de-montfort
I need to try French prune-plum which is high on Scott’s list of good Maryland E. plums.
Gages are more difficult to achieve highest quality here but are certainly worth a shot if you get excellent sun exposure, they don’t get quite sweet enough in partial shade in my experience. On my own tree, some Green gage get high quality, but I never know which until I bite into the fruit, which sucks. The earliest, quality gage I grow is Oullins.
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Mine are ACN Valor, French Improved and Coe’s Gloden Drop.
Valor was gone. This is French Imprved time to shine. From a handful I ate today, brix ranged from 25-28. Very sweet and aromatic. So good. I wish I were good at describing the taste.
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Anyone growing Kenmore or Honeysweet?
Regarding the different possible Valor varieties floating around, I see that Fedco is selling Valor this year. There is a slight chance I might get one, but Fedco trees tend to be small so it would be several years before it fruits.
Just tried this Euro plum today. In the market its name was ‘Sunset’ never heard of it! Its a cling but very, very sweet, with an after tang. Perfect.
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I don’t know if there is more than one false Valor floating around, and although Mamuang doesn’t quite fully accept my interpretation, I’ve grown the variety from two different nurseries for 25 years, widely planting it and am sure that ACN somehow began propagating something else under its name, after all, most of the Valors I acquired before were from them- about 10 trees a year for well over a decade. Unfortunately the variety they sold as it for the last few years does not perform as consistently for me as it does for her, although I agree in her assessment of the quality of the fruit when it manages to be produced. It bears in Castletons season and earlier than what I feel certain is the true Valor. It’s not like it’s some heirloom that has been passed on for centuries where different types often come about.
I no longer sell Valor from my nursery although I have two trees of it in my orchard that produce quite well for me. However, it’s not as precocious as Empress or quite as widely productive in my area. Empress never seems to have an off year if all plums aren’t frozen out.
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Alan,
I accept your assessment. I just don’t know what to call it so I called it ACN fake Valor. I wish you could post pics of your real Valor so I can compare. It is one of my top three favorite E plums. It has produced well all 3 years from the graft.
Not only I have fake Valor, you think I have fake Castleton, too. Mine was from Raintree. It look like Castleton but much later. It is ripening about the same time as Empress. It tastes good if left to fully ripened. If eat firm, it is just ok. I am working on converting the tree to the fake Valor.
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