I just ate 2 flavor king… i picked 5 of them a few days ago…still hard but fully colored (dark purple/flesh red)…i let them sit on the refrigerator for a few days… they were soft today …delicious… I have too many fruit on my tree so i was just trying to thin it some before the branches broke. I think i’ll wait another week and pick some more…i’ve got about a dozen emerald drop left to eat and that is about it…running out of tree fruits to munch on.
I should have thanked Fruitnut sooner. Thank you for the advice, Fruitnut. Bought one last year.
Just measured Satsuma plum at 15 Brix Shiro is about 11.
I was just look at DWN chart…I need to add Weeping Santa Rosa…looks like it fits in a time slot where i have a gap (right after Flavor Supreme)…in Modesto that being the 1st two weeks of July…here Flavor Supreme is 1st or 2nd week of July…so WSR would probably be late July. I could also add Emerald Beaut for a very late plum…although all my Dapple Dandys are still hanging…so that is pretty late plum/pluot here. EB would probably hang to Oct here…
ripening chart
Maybe December.
Those CA ripening dates don’t align very well with my east-coast ones. Satsuma is not much after Santa Rosa for me, and Laroda and Mariposa are quite late, almost a month after Satsuma. They have them in the reverse order which is a huge difference. I have EB but it has not fruited yet … it had a few this year but they dropped.
Anyway, its hard to say how EB would do for you.
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Well our first frost is usually the first week of October so that probably would be it… We do get a lot of sun in Oct but the days are getting awfully short.
Scott-
ACN has one but doesn’t list WSR or Flavor Supreme…
That ACN chart is closer to my experience; the two charts have 7 weeks difference in the SR-Satsuma gap (1 week ACN; 8 weeks DWN).
My Emerald Beaut is just turning color so I haven’t tried one yet. But they don’t look ripe. I’m hoping they’ll hold into Oct here. That’s for trees that leaf out in early Febr. And I’ve been running 90-95F for months.
I still have all my Dapple Dandys hanging…its suppose to be hot through probably the 10th…so if the wasps stay off them i’ll let them hold.
Flavor King cracks worse then Superior …but it is delicious.
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/franktank232/media/0831151151.jpg.html
My son is addicted to candy (which we ban) and he even says its the sweetest plum he has ate. Wife had some (not much of a fruit eater) and she loved them. Still have about a dozen sitting here.
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Those look nice. I’m glad they are ripening while it’s still hot. That’s a plus for quality.
Still waiting for my Dapple Dandy also (zone 7). First year for them. Ate a split one yesterday. It was bland, not ripe yet. Hope they ripen in 1 to 2 weeks. Temperatures low to high 80s and no rain forecast. Weather has been dryer and warmer than normal in my Long Island neighborhood.
Another way of harvesting Flavor Kings is to net the tree, if it is small enough. Tie it all up at the graft union and be treated to a tree ripe FK everyday!
It’s Emerald Beaut season here in the bay area. My only EB hung around hidden in the dense canopy and dropped off mysteriously. It tasted very good for an early dropped fruit though. I bought a pound of EB at Trader Joe’s for $2.50. The produce store next door had them for $.99/lb!
Final followup here… My two very late ripening Euro plums are proving to be much easier to get fruit off of than the other ones. They ripen after the worst of the rot is past. Golden Transparent Gage is a very late gage plum, they are still not all ripe yet but the ones I have eaten so far are all excellent. They taste as good as any of the other Gage types I have gotten fruit off of, rich and sugary. I lost some to rot but given the tree was surrounded by rotting plums it did pretty well. Middleburg is a prune-type plum with as rich a flavor as any prune plum (and as good a rating as any of them in Plums of New York). It got very little rot. Neither of them is a supreme curc magnet, and while GTG did get a fair amount of knot Middleburg got little.
I am going to try a bit harder next year to do rot sprays, but these two would probably do OK in my climate with no rot sprays - I did few sprays this year and these guys had to put up with a huge amount of spores floating around them due to rotting neighbors. Those of you in more northerly climates are getting the same benefit on somewhat less late plums, but for me I need the latest ones to get the benefit.
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That’s good to know about the Emerald Beaut.I’ll arrive in the area on the 19th and will probably check out the farmers market in the City. Brady
Thanks for posting this follow up. Have you tried Imperial Epineuse and, if so, have any opinion on how it compares with Middleburg for disease resistance and eating quality?
I have a plum I got named Imperial which I believe is Imperial Epineuse. It is usually a very good plum, but this year it did the rot thing like all my other plums. It also was highly sensitive to curculio.
Imperial Ep has a reputation for being difficult and highly susceptible to rot. I haven’t tasted it in years but remember it as being as good as it gets. I need to get some wood of that one again.
Hello, First, our purple hearts ripen just after the shiros are finished, before Burgandy, and weeks before Castletons are ready. We have a Satsuma graft on one tree (and several pre fruiting ones in the ground) and it ripens much later than purple hearts do, do your purple hearts have white spots on them? Mine are solid purple.
I have a few “Imperial Epineuse” trees I grafted from Scions from GRIN. They are a green purple plum with very high brix, I picked 60lb of a 8’ tree today, very vigorous. I have believed Imperial epineuse is supposed to be a blue plum am I mistaken?
Dry weather lately helped the gages do the best they have done in many years, Early transparent, Cambridge Gage (very good but small) Jefferson (I may pull this one out, not that good), Rosy Gage (very good as well) all had record crops with little cracking or rot, Oullins as well did very well.
Eric
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How did your Burgundy and Purple Heart plums perform this year?
Purple hearts and burgandy did very well. We used bug netting on them this year to prevent the japanese beetle and wasp damage which is very bad on these varieties and it worked excellently with little damage. Burgandy ripens just after purple hearts and are very similar in look and taste, our customers confuse them.
Eric