Space is indeed limited, its going between two trees spaced 10’ apart. Also I should probably mention that its already ordered, haha. I’m planning on making the Shiro 1/3 of the tree to be on the northern side for vigor management.
I’d also love to hear your recommendations for varieties that compliment the Shiro and Satsuma in terms of reliability and disease/pest resistance.
It is possible that on that dwarfing rootstock Elephant Heart would work well, ripening after Satsuma and over a surprisingly long period and then storing for quite a while. It is the queen of all J. plums, IMO, but takes forever to bear on Myro and not reliable on most sites, but I’d give it a shot on St. Julian. Its main problem is that it tends to be overly vegetative but it is also prone to pitch pockets- hard spots in the flesh that vastly reduce the eating quality. It’s the only plum I’ve had this problem with.
Ruby Queen has similar deep-red flesh, bears at about the same time but doesn’t reach the sugar of EH in my location. I think it is still very good although Scott is not a fan.
All that said, Flavor King pluot might just be the best choice. The best pluots tend to be a lot like Elephant Heart. Flavor king is completely delicious and precocious. It also bears later than Satsuma.
I would recommend Weeping Santa Rosa, its a very reliable plum for me. Santa Rosa is a unique plum flavor. If you want a later plum with the same amazing flavor get Laroda. Later might be better, my recollection is WSR Shiro and Satsuma while not overlapping are pretty close. Elephant Heart I grew for a dozen years and got very few fruit. Flavor King is great but you need a good spray program for it as it will rot otherwise. Lavina is another very good and uniquely flavored plum to consider. In general the Japanese plums can vary a great deal in flavor and it makes it good to grow several kinds.
Scott, based on one of your previous posts the Weeping Santa Rosa was the first plum I wanted and even pushed my wife to let me plant it in the front of our house arguing its ornamental characteristics with no luck, haha. I’m glad you brought it up again because the weeping trait could make for a very interesting looking tree.
I do want a more spread harvest so Laroda seems to be a good alternative to Flavor King. Is it as reliable as the WSR? Does Laroda bloom overlap with Shiro / Satsuma?
Unrelated - and this might be a crazy idea - but could I in any way graft an apricot (Tomcot?) scion onto the Shiro?
One weeping branch… hmmm.
Santa Rosa is highly flavored but Laroda would likely give you a better time frame. I think it’s sweeter than Santa Rosa but wasn’t a plum that got ANY sugar last year while other varieties did great in the excessive rainy season. I was very disappointed in it.
I haven’t found Flavor King particularly susceptible to rot although my experience is very limited. Why should it rot more than other J. plums? Same type of skin and it doesn’t appear to be particularly prone to cracking.
That said, Scott’s opinions are based on conditions closer to yours than mine, and that’s golden.
Any thought on the apricot (Tomcot) on Shiro idea? I’ve tried growing standalone apricots with little success, which is a shame because I really like them.
I should also mention that Santa Rosa is not a consistent cropper here, it tends to bear light.
Are they even compatible? I’m assuming not, but I really should try grafting a cot to a peach.
Probably not, I would need some kind of inter-stem but then the whole aspect of pollination (even if the variety is self-pollinating) comes into play. Just wanted to know if you’ve ever head of something similar being done.
I have several apricot include shiro grafted on red leaf plum and grow well so far, if this counts as cot on plum.
I seconded Lavina. It’s very prolific with large plums (comparing to Satsuma and Shiro). Plum grows like crazy. It can throw out 4-5 ft long branch in a season. Managing a multi-grafted plum tree is not as easy as I think it would be. If your trees space 10 ft apart, that’s good. Mine are too close to each other.
I have not grafted apricots on my plums. Don’t know if it would work without an interstem. I have been successful in grafting several varieties of apricots on my peach and nectarine trees.
Good to know about Lavina, I think you might have given me some wood of it- anyway someone did last year and it’s growing. Yeah, grew a lot.
I’m not very scientific about choosing locations for grafts — I just look at the tree and work with what branches it has. Regarding plum varieties, most of them work well here in California and are mostly problem free, so my experience will be of little use for you. Although I would second the Lavina recommendation, it is very vigorous, precocious, and has very nice flavor.
Re apricot question, I believe you can graft it on a pluot/plumcot or a P. cerasifera x P. salicina hybrid like Lavina.
Is this location specific? My grafted SR just tasted sweet (not much at that) and with barely any flavor. Just a fraction of Flavor King.
I like Santa Rosa flavor. Not as intense as Flavor Supreme or Flavor King, but still very good.
That sounds very far from how I would describe mine. They are very aromatic and strong sweet-tart. The only plums tasting anything like it that I have tried have SR in their ancestry. Maybe you got a dud stick?
I think I may have missed this question… Laroda I had in a bad spot and it wasn’t super reliable there but I moved it to a better spot and now its doing very well. Unfortunately the graft is too low and the deer got nearly all of them this summer. I am going to get that graft going higher and add another one. Generally all asian plums overlap in bloom.
I wish I knew … I have found plums vary a lot in their rot susceptibility. My Weeping Santa Rosa was right next to the Flavor King and the difference was night and day. You probably don’t see this since you have a good synthetic spray program. I may add Flavor King back now that I am using synthetics.
Not for my nursery trees, and so far, I’ve only harvested Flavor King from nursery trees- but experience is limited.
@scottfsmith @alan There is an underlying molecular mechanism in play for every microbial (or really any) disease, e.g. susceptible varieties might have certain protein in their cell wall or cell membrane that enhances the ability of the rot fungus to penetrate the cells, on the other hand, resistant varieties may lack such feature or may have some effective molecular defense mechanism against it. Same way that certain animal species or even a population of the same species may have resistance to HIV or certain type of cancer. These variations in susceptibility to a certain disease are genetic in origin and may not always be determined by phenotypic characteristics.