Green Gage: The Holy Grail Of Stone Fruits

If it smells like a fragrant plum, it is usually ripe.

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At advise from you on cherries, I have been buying them like I did last year, a lot. Have to say, I prefer other fruits more, like plums, peaches etc. Did you buy marianna rootstock from a common nursery?
Need to go in way smaller treeā€™s. Thank you for your advise.Bob.

I bought plum trees grafted on Marianna rootstocks from Raintree. I did not buy Marianna rootstocks.

My cherry tree is on Gisela 5.

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Mamuang, can you please tell me where you got the bags covering your gages?

I use different kinds of bags on different fruit. Are you talking about the window screen bags/sleeves?

The bread bag looking ones in the photo in this post.

I grafted a Bavay (thanks Stan) last year . It is blooming now. Based on all the discussions above, I canā€™t wait to taste the fruits

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I bought a whole stack of perforated bread bags, the long one (6x28ā€)

Then, I cut each open length-wise, and stapled 2 bags together so they will be one wide and ling sleeves.

Iā€™ve used them for plums as plums set a lot of fruit up and down each branch. It is not possible to bag one plum at a time.

This bag wonā€™t work well if it touches fruit because OFM and PC can lay eggs through that thin plastic.

Annie
My Bavay has been stingy in production. It is likely that it does not like any pollination partners I have to offer. So, I have only eaten a few these past two years. I donā€™t remember what they tasted like, to be honest.

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I grafted it on a tree with 40+ cultivars. It blooms later than most of the J. plums but it blooms with Mirabelle, general hand and other later blooming plums. I will be happy just taste one.

When I was looking at plums this year green gage came to mind almost instantly. I planted a green gage from One Green World and a Bavays green gage from trees of antiquity. Both are leafing out. Canā€™t wait to try them. I hear they are incredibly sweet. Weird explorer on YouTube rated the sweetness at a 8 or 9 out of 10 and said normal plums from the grocery store donā€™t do plums justice. I am fine with small plums if they are sweeter. I have a bit of a sweet tooth.

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My Bavay gage is on a Mirabelle tree. There are 5-6 Euro plum grafts including 2 mirabelles, Cambridge gage, Coeā€™s, Pearl, French Improved etc. all around. Still, it has not set well for me.

Green gage was the worst re. minimal fruit setting so I removed that large limb last year.

Have a large green gage Iā€™m not impressed with anything about it but the flavor.

Has General Hand produced any fruits and if not,are there usually many flowers?

Brady, I got the scion from you(thanks). This is the first year it has flowers. It has quite a bit flowers. I would say normal amount flowers compare to Santa Rosa which really doesnā€™t like to bloom. I also grafted a branch of wild plum in the same tree for pollinating. The wild plum always has a lot of flowers

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Mine were too and I had two of them at one point. Every summer I would get a handful of Bavayā€™s only, and it is a small plum. Good though, very sweet!

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I planted two Eu Plums in 2018ā€¦

No fruitā€¦ not even any blossoms yet.

Nice healthy treesā€¦ I keep thinking this will be the yearā€¦ but nope.

Will not plant those again.

Mine took up to seven years before they fruited. Part of growing fruit trees is patience. Hard to do, but true.

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What really accelerates fruiting is pulling branches below horizontal which is especially useful for the less precocious E. plums. It is a traditional English training method known as festooning.

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in 2018 I put in a 4-1 Multi from Raintree. in 2020 I saw my first flower. 2021 I saw my first few dozen fruit set but i think they all where lost to PC. One thing I noticed is I get flowers on the least shaded branches.