I am still hoping that your normal bloom times are significantly ahead of mine here. Up here, we are not out of the woods on hard freezes even in early May.
I added an AU Cherry Plum today… Rural King had them and Spring Satin.
From the AU Cherry thread from a few years ago.
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I got AU cherry plum scion from two sources recently via trades.
I am going to replace more of my AU Rosa this spring … with grafts of AU cherry.
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Posting here so as not to take over the pictures thread with J plum talk.
@TNHunter Glad you posted your pictures. There were plum trees for sale at Kroger in full bloom so I went to check my own trees - buds are still closed tight. I figure we are at least a week behind you here, maybe 2.
One other thing you might find interesting - the local orchard here added a row of Shiro plums recently. They were in full bloom when I was there in mid March last year and they got plums to harvest and sell in the summer. So it can be done!
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Just found this thread! By “Japanese plums”, do you guys mean Prunus mume, aka “Ume Plum”, aka “Flowering Apricot”. If yes, I have a few of these and absolutely love them! They are my most vigorous trees and blooming hard right now.
I think i am going to have to give AU Roadside plum a try. I gave it a pretty good whirl with research… literally no pics or video to be found of the fruit… and reviews on this forum are pretty lackluster with most of them being removed due to poor fruit set.
On paper it seems to be a great one… however in real life there seems to be no proof of it.
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The lack of information has stopped me from adding that one already. Maybe poor pollination is the culprit? Seems like J plums are fussy about that. People here seem to prefer AU Rubrum which is newer. I know Blake grows both.
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I narrowed it down to Methley for the most part… also Burbank plum. Those seem to be the best roosters for J. plums that most folks omit due to older bad reviews i think.
im adding Rubrum myself… Legg Creek Farm had a deal going on with free shipping during the holidays so i bought up everything they had that i didnt have… cheaper than most other places and im happy with what they sent me.
Rubrum i think is a mutant of Crimson which had stellar reviews and it was a cross of Bruce and Methley.
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Thought most of the hate for Methley was because it was a block knot magnet.
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Today March 6… my Shiro looks like this.
My AU Producer looks the same.
AU Rosa is a few days ahead and had just a few open blossoms today.
I think that cold spell we had a week or two ago 15F here… made them hold off a little on blooming this year. They are blooming a week or little more later this year than last year.
I have no frost in my 10 day forecast.
Could be the year for plums here.
But I have seen 25F on April 15 before.
TNHunter
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I think one person mentioned it in this thread… overall in just this forum i wouldnt call it a ‘magnet’. I think years ago in older forums if someone mentioned that it was a ‘magnet’ for them then it just was.
Alot of things are ‘the best’ for some while ‘the worst’ for others…
1… Shiro
2… AU Producer
Those two bloom nicely together. And open first blossoms about a week later than AU Rosa.
3… AU Rosa… still bloming but many have dropped petals at this point.
AU Rosa is absolutely self pollinating… so it should not matter of it blooms a little earlier than the other two. The first year I planted it… it bloomed well … 100 or so blossoms and all those set fruit. There were no other plums blooming.
TNHunter
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My Methley and AU Rosa have been in full bloom for several days now here in the mountains of Western North Carolina. They are blooming a week or so later than the last couple of years but we still routinely have freezes through mid-April and frosts right on up to the first week of May.
If they freeze again this year, as they have every year since I planted them 4 years ago, I am pulling them out and replacing them with euro plums or bagging plums altogether and planting something else.
@Ospreyjp … I grew jplums here for 13-14 years and got one good crop… 2 or 3 other smaller crops… and the both died… one year apart.
I planted euplums in 2018… a pair of them. One got bkack knot twice and then died one spring when leafing out.
One remains and is supposed to be self pollinating… but I have not gotten a single plum from it yet.
It did for the first time set some fruit last year… but it all dropped.
This year could be the year !
Yep… I have been thinking that for several years now.
Euplums can take a long time to start fruiting.
TNHunter
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All my first year grafts of Empress and Kenmore are full of flower buds.
They are on track to bloom with my sour cherries which have usually fared quite well against frost.
Vic Red is already blooming , ahead of Toka, which is not a good sign. Im hoping it’s just confused with the transition from Alaska to NC.
This year I will be adding a couple beach plums, pamela american plum, and Castleton, another classically precocious european.
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@SoMtHomestead … I noticed yesterday that the graft of Vic Red American plum I added last spring had a few blossoms open.
It is blooming with AU Producer and Shiro and a few others.
I was expecting it to be a late bloomer… but seems more of a mid bloomer.
TNHunter
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