My plums are starting to ripen and they are bland. This is the first year this has happened. We have had a lot of rain in the last two weeks, I guess that is the reason. It seems like rain in the past hasn’t caused this. Also the fruit isn’t cracking. I guess that’s because there wasn’t a dry spell before the rain. What’s also a bummer is that I have a bumper crop this year.
I’m curious, are there others in middle TN experiencing this as well.
Sometimes trees plug in at a certain age and their roots become so extensive that the fruit gets more bland. Too much water could contribute to blandness with some varieties (like Shiro), but I’ve gotten very high quality plums on wet years so I believe they are probably less affected as a species by excess water than many other tree fruits.
What variety are you harvesting? Did you thin them?
I did very little thinning but I thin little every year. I mainly pick all the PC damage. Varieties are Howard miracle, Ozark Primer, Spring Satin, Morris. A branch grafted to Sprite may not be affected.
It’s the rain. Thinning has nothing to do with the taste, just the size. I never thin my plums. I’ve had the same amount of rain as you, and I’m getting some bland fruit also. It’s supposed to stop raining next week, so flavor should improve as we get more sun.
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I would disagree it does enhance sweetness to thin. A tree can only make so much sugar depending on leaf density. The sugar is moved to the fruit. MSU has broke down how many leaves per fruit in some fruits are needed to maintain a high brix. Do you want that sugar in 300 fruits or do you want it in 100?
Rayrose, once again a point of contention. When I’ve not thinned Methely at sites the fruit is clearly more bland than sites where I do. I haven’t tested every variety, but have you done any comparisons on the same year?
Plums are not made bland because of too much water like other fruit, IMO, but from a lack of sun. The reason I believe this is that I manage trees on sites with overwatered lawns and plums are the one fruit that don’t lose flavor from this treatment.
However, with rain comes clouds, so I guess you can blame the rain. Most fruits do get blander as a direct result of too much water based on my own observations. But I won’t state these opinions as absolute facts. I’m not nearly that smart and horticulture is pretty tricky.
Too much water will certainly blow out the flavor on pluots. Not only that but give them enough and they get soft and fall off early, very bland. I had a couple of watering accidents this spring and it ruined my early pluots. Pluots are basically plums.
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Also, I wonder if very early ripening varieties are more suspect to blandness from lack of sun than late ripening varieties. Maybe less room for error if there are less days to ripen?
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There may be a tipping point, but a water accident is not the same as a season with a great deal of rain- I’m guessing you are talking about flooding. I repeat, over the years I’ve had lots of wet years and plums were the least affected in terms of sugar. I also have several sites where I manage plums where the soil is soppy in spots and always wet and plums are the only fruit that achieves high quality in these conditions.
If you drown their roots, it’s another story. There are different levels of stress that produce different results.
It may be that folks complaining have poor draining soil contributing to the issue.
Fruit growing is complicated and its very difficult to be absolutely sure of anything. I have one advantage over most fruit growers though- I manage trees in a wide range of soils and other conditions and do so every hour of every working day- but that only gets me so far. The one thing it has taught me is don’t assume the logical answer is the correct one. You never “know”.
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I just asked this same question about blueberries - in another thread. I wondered if it was lack of fertilizer - but suspected it was too much water. We had a dry spell followed by some deluges - 2 and 3 inches of rain at a time.
I have another plum question. I sprayed several times. I have a Santa Rosa which doesn’t do anything - a few scrawny fruits. A Toka . . . doesn’t hold on to its crop. And a couple of Metheleys which have fruit this year, for the first time. I think I owe that to the spray schedule. However . . . even though I measured accurately - the spray seems to collect in a droplet, at the bottom of a lot of the fruit and results in a damaged spot on the skin. If left on the tree - it ends in a nasty ‘rot spot’. Always at the bottom. I thought it might be the sticker . . . so left that out after the first spot damage occurred. Still got the bottom spots.
If I didn’t spray - I’d have PC and disease problems . . . If I do - I get these damaged fruits.
Any advice? Is the spray too strong, even though it is the prescribed ‘ratio’ ? What’s going on?
I don’t find blueberries losing flavor from normally wet years. It is when the sun gets real hot that they become tasteless, but I can’t know if this is the result of being late in the season regardless of heat although it seems like last of the crop is always lower quality, regardless of relative precip or temps.
It would be nice if we had some actual research to look at. FN has clearly established the relationship between deficit watering and high brix for the fruit he grows in his greenhouse for at least the varieties of tree fruits he grows there.
When I make comparisons it is impossible to separate the affects of clouds from the affects of too much water.
It may be your sprayer or the fineness of the spray from your spray nozzle. You might also be over spraying. You don’t need to saturate the fruit.
I was hoping some growers in middle TN could chime in, their growing conditions should be similar to mine.
Also, in 30 years of fruit growing I have never had this happen.
The last two weeks have been sunshine and heat. Actually we are very dry now. The flavor is coming back in my plums. I believe it was not the excess water but the lack of sunshine.