Methley Plum

General Fruit Growing
#21

Thanks @nil and @JohnS for the sunlight info. I will take that into consideration in my possible planting locations.

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#22

Were the 23 brix Methleys ripening on the tree for long? Do they last long after picking on the counter or in the fridge?

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#23

@ramv hi, taste wise, how would you rank these when you had all.of.them in your tree/area? Methley, Beauty, Hollywood and Shiro

#24

@JohnS taste wise, how would you rank methley,obilnaja, Beauty, Howard Miracle and Satsuma?(assuming yours are now fruiting)

#25

Hollywood, I have not tasted in many years so I don’t remember.
Of the others, Methley is #1 by a wide margin, Shiro is distant #2 and beauty is at the bottom by an equal margin.

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#26

If you’ve tasted these, where would you rank methley vs Italian plum, obilnaja, french plum, president plum?

#27

I can only compare Methley and Italian. They are like apples vs oranges. Methley is more juicy, more wine flavor, clingstone. Italian is dry, freestone and very sweet. Both are very good.

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#28

@tubig the plums you’re looking to compare are almost all in different seasons so I view them as complementary rather than better/worse than each other. these numbers are approx days before/after santa rosa:

  • obilnaja -24
  • methley -15
  • beauty -15
  • shiro -2
  • hollywood +18
  • improved french +35
  • italian +45
  • president +56

the only ones in direct competition are methley and beauty. I prefer beauty but they’re very different plums. methley is softer, smaller and sweeter. beauty is more like a california plum you might get in the supermarket, has some sweet/sour to it

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#29

@tubig, I think you will have a difficult time finding obilnaja and hollywood in Canada. Methley is an incubator for all manner of stone fruit diseases in our climate, (just not worth the disease risk IMO).

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#30

@tbg Thanks for the feedback. Did your Stanley have more problems than your other plums disease-wise? I read a couple of US univeristies citing it as very susceptible to black knot yet I see it in the recommened list of plums in the WW Fruit Foundation so maybe susceptibility is location-specific.

#31

Not sure if the old prune plum tree here was a Stanley or Italian. It was here when we bought the property almost 60 years ago. It is likely 80+ years old and never really had any disease issues. Not more than 40 ft from the now removed Methley, so it obviously has some disease resistance. It’s on it’s last legs as far as production, so I will be removing it soon. I have grafted a cutting from it onto a new Seneca tree, but I’m not sure if it’s taken yet.

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#32

Very interesting information. Where you get all the numbers and what they stand for to know the quality of the fruits?

#33

the numbers are +/- day ratings vs. santa rosa japanese plum. I got them from a database I maintain. I have a variety of sources loaded and it does a weighted average of all of them, making some attempt to propagate day ratings across different sources in stages as it tries to eventually give everything a rating.

for example, it may have a source that has obilnaja a couple weeks earlier than beauty. by itself that might not give you a number for either one, but from some other sources it may already know that beauty is -15. then it can do the math and come up with a number for obilnaja. this is the same thing many people need to do manually right now, so it can take some of the tedium out. I need to add some documentation for how exactly it did the numbers, it’s stored in the database now but not presented anywhere

then for euro plums I manually added the japanese->euro offset that my database figured (italian is santa rosa +45 days)

some of the numbers are pretty good, based on many sources, and some might be off a little. obviously they vary with climate too

www.fruitfacts.xyz

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#34

Thank you so much for the hard work. Great information Michael.

#35

Howard Miracle is the only one of those I know, although I have Hollywood, SHiro, and Methley. I would say tie between Methley and Howard Miracle, then Shiro, then Hollywood. Methley is earlier so valued that way. SHiro is yellow = antioxidants and polyphenols. Hollywood is pink. Methley purple, so all good. Hollywood is a good, not super large tree, so good to graft onto. I prefer these Asian plums to Euro/Italian for eating. Murky disagrees. Italian/Euro are better for drying, canning. I’m going to make a sauce out of my Asian plums this summer.
John S
PDX OR

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#36

Santa Rosa has a very distinctive flavor I like a lot. Maybe my favorite.
John S
PDX OR

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#37

We agree there. And you’ve already said I like them better for fresh eating. But I also think they are better for sauces. They have some substance.

#38

@tbg9b re your 80 yr old plum tree, when does it bloom and whens the usual harvest month? Would you describe its taste as “complex” or is it mainly just “sweet”?

#39

I have two 80 year old plum trees. One tree is probably a yellow egg/Pershore plum tree. The prune plum is likely Stanley or Italian. They both should be blooming in the next week or possibly two if the weather continues to be below normal seasonal temps. The yellow plum usually ripens in mid to late August. The prune plum usually ripens mid September.

The prune flavour is sweet/tart, once it is very ripe it will be mostly just sweet. The yellow plum is mostly just sweet, it is great at it’s peak, but its window is very short.

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