Thank, Alan. I have Flavor Granade and Flavor Kung grafted bu I am not sure if they will be true to label.
I have Spring Satin which is early, productive and tasty. I had Honey Punch for the first time. It is a late pluot that is productive and large.
This year all Honey Punch suffered from cracking. I hope we won’t get this much rain every year. Even when I had to pick them early, they still tasted very good, sweet/tart with firm texture.
I am happy with these two pluots.
Spring Satin was bred for the humid region. West coast varieties are much more dicey although some turn out to be great, such as Redgold nectarine. It seems a tendency of pluots to become attractive to wasps far before they are ripe and to appear ripe to the eye very prematurely as well- never an asset to the home grower.
However, only Flavor Grenade in my orchard has large enough crops to truly test. I don’t need great relative productivity to enjoy any variety if it’s good enough and pluots do tend to be especially good texturally and for their high brix. I didn’t get a single good FG this year, and a customer with a small graft got a nice basket full of excellent fruit. What kills me is that her orchard gets more shade than mine, it just isn’t in a hollow. But it’s more than that, her fruit got up high sugar well before mine did- mine never did. The mysteries of fruit growing never end. My Flavor grenade is in a dry soil spot too.
It’s complicated and difficult enough to figure out that it almost qualifies for relationship status!
I’m harvesting Dapple Dandy and Honey Punch today. I still have Fall Fiesta and Flavor Fall to harvest. probably in about 3 weeks. I had some problems, but no cracking.
Perhaps it would be more appropriate to post it in the fruit photo section. Folks without excess rain SHOULDN’T have a problem harvesting sound plums related to cracking.
Congratulations, they look beautiful.
Yeah just looking for a place to post. I will in the future.
I had a thought, if you mound the trees as high as possible. At least four feet, maybe splitting would be less? The rain has been heavy here at times and I must say if I harvest after a rain the fruit does become watered down. I hope you guys get better seasons in the future. This year I had an exceptional amount of peppers but the heavy rains caused a lot of blossom end rot. I had to toss 90% of them. I’m going to try mounding them next year.
My veg garden is in a wet spot on my property but I grow everything on wide raised beds- like 4’ wide and 2’ high. My peppers, hot or sweet, never suffer from excessive rain and visitors, even skilled gardeners often comment on the size and productivity of my pepper plants (I also treat them like fruit trees and don’t have them crowding each other). However, I have soil that drains extremely quickly for some of my plums and some in wetter locations, soil-wise, and I don’t see any difference on the cracking issue.
Good luck on your experiment though and I hope you have a control to help you evaluate results.
Some things grow well here and others do not. Peppers are hard here. On the other hand most in my area had a bad tomato season whereas I had an exceptional one. I am getting some peppers now. And green chili peppers and also banana peppers never had any issues. I make a lot of southwest dishes and need tons of green Chili’s. I also grow my own Mexican oregano. It’s a perennial I bring in the house every winter.
The more I review this thread, the more I realize how fortunate we are here where although our dry summers result in high water bills, the stone fruit we manage to grow does not suffer the cracking and rotting that the wetter regions east of us are seeing. This year we harvested more plums than we could consume in spite of a record drought. So I am learning that I need to invest more time and efforts into increasing my mulching to conserve water. I have one Empress plum that does see some mildew and mold on ripening fruit, this dry year was no exception, but still not disastrous. Enough good ones survived to feed the squirrels and family as well!
Dennis
Kent, wa
