The nectaplum is a wonderful fruit. I found they were bland until the tree established itself. Once mature the fruit was amazing. It took a few years of fruiting to get there. Now that tree Japanese beetles avoided. Which made me think of Hollywood. But my observations were only with the nectaplum. It could be they liked it least? I have a lot to offer them 
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Jessica
What varieties of plums you have to cross pollinate Black Ice?
Per Fedco, what cross pollinate it, is still not well known.
I was told that when fruit sized up, turned yellow and dropped could be a delayed response to fruit killed by freeze.
Black Ice is not as cold hardy as the name implies.
Interesting @mamuang !! By “fruit killed by freeze”, do you mean there would have to be a frost after petal fall? If so, that didn’t occur. The other varities I have (blooming period overlapped) are Toka, Vermont, Purple Heart and RedStar. Maybe you’re onto something with pollination…The almonds in the pits are not fully developped. They look shriveled up/dried up. Here is a picture
In my case freeze came twice a week apart during blooming time of J plums, cherries and peaches.
Most J plum and pluots fruit buds were killed. These included Black Ice, Satsuma and Toka.
Beauty and Shiro were the two that fruit buds survived almost fully. Cherries developed fruit, sized up, turned brown and dropped 90% of fruit.
I have 3 plum trees and 2 peach. All very young. I found one peach early this year and have been watching it. It’s finally getting color.
As for plums, I thought I was pulling a goose egg. This week, I found one plum on two different trees. Feeling optimistic, I intensely searched all three trees… just two plums.
The trees are # years in the ground. Part of me thinks I should have gotten geeked about something other than fruit trees… Lordy they grow slowly when they aren’t producing fruit!
Looking forward to the day when even a bad year will bury me in fruit!
Your zone if you are really zone 4, makes it hard for plums and impossible for peaches.
You have a chance for plums but need to be bud hardy varieties. You don’t want to grow trees for leaves while buds are killed yearly.
@Mamuang Yes, it is hard but cold hardy hybrids seem to do OK for some people here. I agree about BlackIce cold hardiness as it is the only one that gets dieback.
I also had peaches this year. About 7 on my 3 year old “Chinese honey” tree from Whiffletree. Unfortunately, squirrels got them before they were fully ripe.
I often don’t have freezes after bloom time because spring comes quite late and some years, temperature changes drastically (almost no spring, we go from winter to summer, lol). I document all of these things on my blog (blooming time, temperature, etc) http://frugivore4b.blogspot.com/ .
But what do you think of the BlackIce kernels/almonds? Why are they all like that? Could that indicate a pollination problem? My Purple Heart plum kernels are not like that. They are fully developped and look like nice almonds from the store, but smaller. They look viable and I’m gonna plant them next spring.
That image is of the nut inside the pit? So you cracked the pit and that’s the nut? It looks like a pit.
Okay, I Googled and I still think you got the pit and you haven’t cracked it open for the nut/seed.
@Barkslip Yes, that is correct: I cracked open the pit/shell and that is a picture of the nut/almond/kernel (sorry, I am not sure how to call them) that was inside.
4b here. The varieties I planted were all supposedly cold hardy. Lots of blooms on the peaches, so there’s promise. Had good flower clusters on my third plum last year. So… I’m hopeful and will take what I can get when I get them.
Just harvested 7 pear on one tree. Another 17 on another tree, not yet ready.
Someday…
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For us, the FK is very flavorful, even before fully ripe. Flavor Queen on the other hand, is super sweet with little flavor. Which is why one of my kids like the FQ better.
When should one do summer budding with plums? I’ve got a Damson with Toka grafted onto it that I want to be significantly shortened. I need to move the Toka down from the top of the tree to within 5 feet of the ground so that I can better pick it once it actually produces something for me.
Scott
Could be a personal but not-so-common taste preference. I agree with @scottfsmith with just one caveat. The FKs I tasted so far have been from local farmers’ markets. I really wanted to like this fruit as so many rate it as their favorite plum/pluot. To me, it’s exactly what Scott describes it to be, fruit punch flavor!
I actually prefer Santa Rosa over it and no, I am not one of those who likes less sweet, tart fruits for “complex” flavor 
I do like high brix, high acid fruits but not a fan of over sweetened fruit punch though! I still want to give one more chance for FK with home grown fruit before giving up on it.
Those are still picked too early. The best ones are just about soft right off the tree. The fruit will be nearly black, skin and inside.
Now is the time to bud… which reminds me, I was going to bud some peaches last weekend but forgot about it. I’d better get going on it soon.
My new operation for making peach trees is to transplant the volunteers to my nursery area which is fenced from the deer, then summer bud them. In the following spring I will then move to a permanent spot. I added half a dozen trees this spring using this new approach which is very easy. Many of my older trees are fading now so I need replacements. The old trees would have lasted longer but years of borer problems weakened them.
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For me, Inca plum is the winner again. Better than Satsuma, Mariposa, Methley, Beauty, Splash, Flavor King, Flavor Queen, Emerald Drop, Flavor Grenade. It’s really a delicious piece of fruit. Maybe it just hits the sweet spot with my climate. It does have one bad habit of pulling away from the seed and making a pocket, kind of like split pit but the seed isn’t cracked. I don’t mind eating around that, but it certainly wouldn’t fly commercially.
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Is there a concern about daytime temperatures when budding trees? I made an attempt last week at budding the Toka, wrapped with parafilm and shaded with aluminum foil but am concerned the 90 degree days might wreck my chances.
I read that you previously said budding to larger wood is generally unsuccessful (it was a post from years ago). Is there a limit in diameter that you find makes budding less successful?
I’m assuming one wants to use buds from this year’s growth (I did). Is (cleft) grafting such wood just an impossibility? I had the materials out there and made an attempt anyway.
Scott
Thanks for the report. I have a few on a graft to try this year.
I haven’t noticed problems in heat, but always put the grafts on the north side to keep them out of the sun.
Re: larger wood, I had some good luck this summer with larger stocks (a plum I had bark grafted was not supported well enough and blew off in the wind so I budded the wood to some massive waterspouts on another plum; all took). I used to have really bad luck with large wood, but I think the problem was I was not cutting deep enough. To get the size to line up with the bud I was making very shallow cuts in the stock, but those don’t seem to work well… or so is my current theory. But, do a nice normally-deep cut and just align the chip on one of the sides, and voila, success!
Also, T-buds have not worked well for me on larger stocks. I am doing chips only now (on any size stock for that matter), even in spring I seem to have better overall odds with chips.
