Mr Mariani goes over various GG plums… Cambridge, Bavay’s, Jefferson, Coes, Purples, Transparents etc
5 Likes
This one and the other finest Gages like Washington etc were from a planting of the William Prince nursery where his father planted 25 quarts of pits. It was an annual tradition to plant seeds of their finest fruits.
https://www.chathamapples.com/PlumsNY/MajorPlums.html#Washington
https://www.chathamapples.com/PlumsNY/PlumSpecies.html#ReineClaude
It would be great if someone or someones would carry on this tradition like the persimmon and pawpaw ‘legends’ as i have seen them called.
There is room i think to create many many many more interesting plums just by planting seed.
I think some of the finest plums and many other fruits that folk talk about were from seed planted hundreds of years ago.
Its possible that much finer examples could be brought forth just by trial and error of planting Reine Claude pits
2 Likes
Reine Claude Conducta as someone said is Count Althann’s Gage which i think is listed as Altham?
Not a promising review by Cummins… but also not sure if the same as Altham from 150 years ago either
1 Like
What do you think your best pollinator is for your bavays and GG? Im adding a row of european plums this coming spring and trying to figure out what I want to purchase. Had rosy gage in the cart, but after reading about all the black knot issues, Ive decided against it
They are self pollinating
1 Like
Actually, different green gages are hard to tell from each other, and some of them appear not to be self-pollinating. For example, according to this webpage (Gage - Old Green Gage - tasting notes, identification, reviews), the old green gage is “Not self-fertile” while Cambridge gage is “Partially self-fertile” (Gage - Cambridge Gage - tasting notes, identification, reviews).
1 Like
I was taking about Euro gages only.
That would be trees I ordered of ACN… they admitted they were selling a very similar looking but not tasting J. plum under the Green Gage name… because they usually only sold it to homegrowers that tend to live where European plums either can’t be or are difficult to grow. When I called them out they stopped doing it or selling any plum under that name.
The variety never brought me great pleasure… or any other gage for that matter. I think there are good reasons they never took off commercially- even in CA. Novelty is their primary asset… and novelty can be interesting to the palate. Fruit fanatics tend to seek it out… but start with easier to grow things…commercial plums are generally easy to beat when grown on your own trees- they tend to be picked unripe in commercial production.
NAFEX used to have a Green Gage fanatic that wrote articles and I believe a book on the greatness of this variety- but the man had no experience as a grower and it was a plum that flourished in his back yard when he was a child. It was somewhere downstate NY, maybe in a sweet spot for GG. There is a very limited area in France that is also especially suited for this variety from which it gained its European fame for greatness.
1 Like
Green gages have the typical plum problems for me (plum curculio, black knot, brown rot, jap beetles) but nothing out of the ordinary except for rain induced cracking. That can get pretty bad, no tolerance whatsoever. Productivity and taste have been excellent. My trees are getting huge which might help productivity but makes maintenance quite a bit harder. Black knot barely showed up until recently but got bad pretty quick. For me the taste has lived up to all the hype. It’s probably my favorite fruit flavor-wise when it doesn’t get watered down by rain.
4 Likes
And what other Euro plums have you grown?. It is hard to know the meaning of a rating that doesn’t include comparison. Tree ripened plums and pluots are amazing.
I grow Ersinger, Castleton, Rosy Gage, Kirke’s Blue, Empress and President. Rosy Gage is excellent but my worst tree for black knot. It’s large and more plummy than gagey. Empress and President are excellent but get hit by yellow jackets because they are later. Hornets and yellow jackets have become a huge problem for me starting in late August. Greengages are early-mid August so they escape yellow jackets for me, which is nice. Flavor King pluot is excellent as well but blooms early and I like the texture of euros better. I love the syrupy texture of greengage. I did order a Flavor King tree this year (I only have grafts) because the flavor is pretty much perfect.
2 Likes
I use Victor reuseable wasp traps to save my plums. A couple traps per tree is adequate protection for me.
5 Likes
Compost tea 
im making faa right now. Fish amino acids fertilizer with brown sugar and LABS. my green gage grows so fast its crazy