How right you are. Once you get the ‘bug’ of fruit growing, you really believe there are no limits, chemicals and all. Finally after leaving zone 7a for 9 a-b, the difference is the heat, the soil, and far less humidity. Great for peaches, apricots and plums but not great for apples even though many are grown here. Oh, cherries too!
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I’m having a very good year. Which is amazing as I can only do about six hours a week gardening which is mostly watering. Rain is average here. I just grabbed a Flavor King too see how it is. Almost ripe crunchy and delicious. All I have left is pluots. No splitting here all year. Well maybe three or four. I have had to give away tons of plums and pluots. I tasted Arctic Jay for the first time. Extremely sweet, beautiful markings in this fruit. I liked it a lot. Big too. So I have five or six pluot cultivars left to harvest. Pest pressure was very low this year. Oh I have Indian free to harvest yet too.
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My Coe’s. Almost all cracked.
This has been a disastrous fruit growing year for me. It is going to rain again today.
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Coe’s seems so much like Green Gage that it’s no surprise it cracks.
All my Euro cracked pretty badly this year. French Improved, Mirabelles, fake Valor, Vision, Coe’s. The only one that did not crack was Pearl. It is a soft plum.
Possibly, the softer the texture of a plum, the less likely it is to crack. I have an unknown J plum next to Mirabelles. That J plums did not crack at all. Its texture was soft and very juicy.
Nice looking J plum that set heavily and no crack!!
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A lot of my Castletons cracked but quite a few didn’t, but it’s in a poor location. So far only 20% or so of my Valors have cracked in locations where other varieties cracked a lot more
I think part of the problem is focusing on Scott’s favorites or other people who grow in different conditions or haven’t been growing fruit in their own for more than a decade. Start with varieties Cornell recommends that are already being grown by commercial growers to some degree, or start with the recs of a local grower that has lots of experience with a very wide range of varieties.
Eric grows in different conditions than I do, but his recs were useful. However, this was an unusually cracky season- usually we have more drying out periods so its hard to compare varieties susceptibility. Nectarines can have a problem cracking and the first season it cropped Red Gold cracked like crazy and I had little hope for the variety. Ever since it has been my best producer of my best yellow nectarines devoid of any cracking. This year also, so I now feel confident to recommend it in my area- after 10 years of production.
Of course the weather we’ve had for the last 10 years may not be what we are facing in the future. Evaluations are never completely settled in this climate.
I had a total of one Coes on my graft. It didn’t crack, but I wasn’t super impressed with it. Not bad- mild, 16 brix.
I see the similarity, other than the gage being different shaped. My Late Transparent Gage didn’t crack and set a massively heavy load. The kids liked them- 15 brix and mild flavor.
I’m not sure how many (Geneva) Mirabelles I lost, but I only saw one left on the tree a couple days ago. I think there were at least a handfull a month or so ago, but one of the recent storms may have claimed them.
Of the plums in the above pic, I liked them in reverse brix order. The Late Muscatelle was best, Jam Session 2nd (small but not bad). The 21 brix Geneva Mirabelle wasn’t bad, but didn’t have a ton of flavor beyond the brix. I wouldn’t refuse them, but the others were better (and quite good).
I’ve been picking Vision, which has been very good. Large and around 20 brix. I’ve lost some to yellow Jackets / damage, but the remaining ones are very good.
Those are Jam Session on the right in the above pic.
I’ve been scavenging the grapes- a few decent ones per bunch. But the ones that are good are quite good. Jupiter is in the high teens for brix, with Faith around 20. Both are good with Faith a bit better in both flavor and texture.
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I think the trick is to focus first on varieties already known to perform well in our climate, that are produced by at least some commercial growers. I had very little cracking on my Valor plums but Green Gage and Coe’s were mostly a mess. Empress has about 50% cracking or otherwise rotting before reaching ripeness so far (they still aren’t ripe) as did Castleton. The weird season has reduced the consistency of high quality, and many of my Valors are shriveling before reaching an amber color of their flesh, which happens once they achieve high brix. The ones that do have amber flesh are quite good, but only a small percentage have gotten there while still being firm, which is when they taste their best. Never-the-less, I’d rather have soft but sweet plums than firm ones that don’t get up the brix. E. plums need to get up to about 19 to be worth growing for me.
I’m hoping quality continues to improve as we wrack up more days without rain, but I wish the nights were cooler. I think that cool nights raise brix and improve fruit quality. They certainly reduce brown rot pressure and my fruit has no active fungicide on it and hasn’t for a couple of weeks.
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I harvested Flavor King. Best year ever with flavor better than most years. Brix between 18.6 to 19.4. Sweetest I remember ever having them. Date was 9-10-21 when harvested.
I missed one Flavor Grenade I harvested the week before. My wife never liked these much but said it is the best pluot so far this year. Dapple Dandy or Honey Punch is next.
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My Vision set too many and size was much smaller than last year. Many have cracked. Those that cracked have gotten brown rot, sooner or later.
I usually do not thin my plums. With brown rot going on a rampage, plums that touched each others have been much more affected.
And my rain- free days lasted only 3 days as it poured yesterday early morning (again). More rain is expected starting Fri- Sun.
These pics of my Vision were taken this afternoon.
It was like the movie Groundhog Day. Seeing the same brown rot over and over and over.
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You should get some Valor wood from me this coming spring. Its proven to be about my most rot resistant plum this season.
I always thin plums, but usually leave a surplus for the third that PC is likely to damage with my low-spray 2 insecticide app approach. This year they never struck and touching plums during constant rain will usually rot. I’m constantly removing touching fruit when I go through my orchard. Earwigs also damage such fruit along with other insects.
As I’ve said, I’m in a spot where dew stays on the fruit especially long and disease pressure here is very high as a result.
I’m beginning to believe that I cannot grow pluots productively here. This year I have clients successfully harvesting pluots in relatively shady locations compared to mine, but the dew apparently kills me. They are vulnerable to rot for too long before they sweeten. It’s too bad because they are truly superior J. plums, whatever they call them or their DNA. Only Aprium has identifiable cot qualities I can detect. That one I can ripen when it produces. Flavor King is also promising.
Thanks for Valor’s offer. I think I will graft over all my Coe’s since Coe’s is so late. It usually has a hard time ripen fully. This year, almost all of them rot.
My plums set so many fruit. Thinning them is a pain but I may need to thin.
Earwigs, I hate them. See them on all fruit.
No rain, no cracks. But wasps tunneling everywhere, leaving nothing but empty sacks of skin.
This is the trouble with late-ripening fruit.
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I get adequate control here with massive amounts of wasp traps, but it takes a couple of weeks to get them under control.
What the pluots do you grow?
I am thinking about switching from J plums to pluots because pluots are tastier and larger.
You comment makes me pause!
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Maybe because they were damaged, but Coe’s is already done here and seemed ripe when I ate the least damaged few. A commercial grower would pick and sell my Valors and Empresses, but many of them are benefitting from continued ripening and will for 2-3 weeks, I think. Especially Empress.
I tried Coes because I thought it might be a good Oct. plum but it seems like it’s more Sept. here. I’ll give it another season to see as this one was very difficult for many varieties of plums I grow.
I am also still ripening quite a few Ruby Queen plums which are much better to my palate than Laroda which is almost finished. Ruby Queen have the deep red flesh of an Elephant heart but are tarter and a bit meatier. The good ones have enough sugar to make tart work for me.
Alan,
You did not answer my question 
What pluots you are growing?
Vexing that I had that tree covered with the Big Bug net, but they got inside with no apparent trouble.
I’ve been growing Flavor Grenade long enough to have given it about 6 seasons to shine and it only did so once, when we had a very dry season. Dapple Dandy had been of bearing age for 3 seasons but last was frozen out, this year the crop kept shrinking and I harvested a few that would have benefitted with more time, but they would have been destroyed by cracking and mold. I haven’t given up on it because at least it set a good crop, so I will try to grow it on the best real estate on my prop.
Flavor King seems like it might be alright, even though my tree died- I harvested some nice fruit one year from a nursery tree and a lone small graft inconveniently located high in a tree over boulders (so I didn’t thin it) bore big fruit this season that broke the graft without severing it. I forgot to check on it when I needed to but all the fruit seemed to be holding up well right up until it disappeared, perhaps dropping when it was ripe. I can’t get Flavor Supreme or Flavor Rich to set a crop.
I have 3 others, 2 I planted last year and one that is called something like Finale, as it is very late. It has fruit right now but the tree suffers a great deal form bacterial spot and is a runt as a consequence. The other two are supposed to be largely suited for home growers and one of them set fruit its second year. It is very low on the tree and I tasted one not quite ripe and then forgot to check up on the remaining 3 fruit. Next year may tell their value as they grew like crazy this one. The vigor itself is a good sign.