The E’s bloom later than J plums, of course.
Underwood and Opal finished about a week ago, and Santa Rosa, Burbank started up. These two are around 7 years in the ground, and have been bearing the last two, but not productively-only a handful or two. Shy bloom as well, compared to my other hybrids. Flavor is top notch for both, these are somewhat similar and each other and to what we get at the supermarket imported from west coast or s america, but better. Size 2- 3". Juicy!
Superior season is here! One of the largest plums I grow, tree is very productive for its age with a dwarfy, weeping habit.
A friend who grows it reports he gets splitting when it ripens in wet weather, I don’t have that problem, and it could due to the difference in cultural practice-his orchard is ‘clean’ with herbacide strips in row, I grow in my trees in a mixed sod understory with lots of perennials.
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Enjoy!
You may be right about the split pits. It seems to be mostly about excess water early in the season and your “understory” may be siphoning a great deal of it. However, on another year his fruit may be of higher quality if there is any early drought. For peaches (and nects), ample water early in the season not only pushes up the size but also the brix, while a water deficit later is helpful for higher sweetness. For plums, excess water even late in the season doesn’t seem to affect brix and it’s the only fruit I grow that is like that.
Yesterday I ate the sweetest Fortune plum I’ve had from a tree that is in sod that is watered every single morning and on excessively rainy years plums are the only fruit I grow that can still reach highest quality here.
All my earlier stonefruit, besides plums, had a ton of split pits this season, nectarines were especially bad and the quality of the fruit was badly affected. Now that it has been dry a while the pits are sound- but earlier ripening varieties are always more vulnerable.
I"ve had Superior split but not this year… i think it just depends…I saw none this year but the fruits were the biggest i’ve ever had. Mine is also grafted on apricot…so maybe that does something… Its a great plum for cold areas…even against my pluots i still think its near the top. Once they ripen they’ll fall ripe off the branch.
Is this what you meant to say? Because I doubt that is true about brix.
Deficit water definately increases brix of pluots and I would think plums.
That comment referring to Superior would most certainly not apply here. I’ve had Superior up to 26 brix but it’s still not in the same ballpark as my best half dozen varieties of pluots.
Yes Fruitnut and we’ve been over this before, I think. I see it as early in the season best growing conditions (including ample water) are best for fruit quality but by about mid-season a water deficit increases brix. You end up with tiny fruit if there is a deficit throughout with a ratio of too much skin to pulp for my tastes. But you are the brix master. Have you carefully experimented to compare the affects of various timings for deficit irrigation?
This season we got a great deal of rain early and a lot of the fruit is quite large, but the stuff ripening now, after about 45 days of relatively dry weather, is very well flavored. I think we’ve gotten around 3" of rain in the last 45 days and only short periods of cloudiness. I don’t see how more sugar would make the peaches, nects and plums I’m eating better, I think it would be too sweet. But then, I don’t need to have peaches the size of softballs as are my Coral Stars right now. The largest Redgold nectarines I’m harvesting are the size of premium ones from CA, the peaches are larger than what they ship.
No I haven’t. It’s not possible in a greenhouse the size of mine even if that were my only interest. I do shoot for a full season water deficit. Starting with wet soil mid winter that means late April until harvest. On trees with a well established root system that doesn’t stunt the fruit size too much very often. At the extreme with brix 28-32+ on nectarines maybe a 50% reduction in size. I can get mid 20s brix with very good size.
So far this yr I’ve applied 7.5 inches for trees leafing out in February. About 1.75 inches per month since June. And I’m running it really hot in there right now, 95-100F for drying fruit. A few trees have minor leaf drop due to water deficit but nothing worse even on 2d leaf trees. Actually my new trees aren’t yet rooted into the full soil area, only about 1/3. The rest has been bone dry since before the trees were planted. This winter I’ll fully wet the entire area so as to establish a bigger root system. The bigger deeper roots will allow the trees to better handle a season long deficit.
Fruit-
Drive up here when they ripen next year and you can try one 
Bring your meter Even “The Donald” would approve of this years Superior plums.
Flavor King still not there…Dapply Dandy same
Emerald Drop—eating now…decent
Splash–gone…kids loved them.
Geo Pride–one left…kids loved them.i like that they are freestone.
I was out looking…i have an Alderman seedling that shows every wild plum characteristic i can identify (leaves/fruit/the tree itself looks like one)… the fruit are small but man…they were actually very good…explosive…like when you bite into them juice sprays everywhere. Skin didn’t seem tart/bitter at all…i’ll have to crop this one better next year and try it again. PC got them all (or so i thought).
This one I got from St Lawrence Nursery, labeled as Northern Blue. I assume this was mislabeled-
Soft fleshed, clingstone, skin is sour and a little astringent. Pretty rot prone, discarded a quart+ yesterday. Tree has a spreading, weeping habit.
Superior, Alderman plums ripening. Heat and sun forcast for a few days should sweeten these up!
Another day, another bowl full of the productive unknown plum. Superior fruit is cracking around 50% as a result of some rain we had-I jinxed myself on that one!
Late season plums are starting to color…
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Toka, ‘Bubblegum-’ whatever you want to call it, these are some of my favs and are just starting to come in. I appreciate their cooperation with pitting, semi-freestone. Great out of hand eating with that candy flavor and aroma. Many of mine got stung by curlculio and are ripening up just fine besides a superficial dimple. Look ma, no spray! 5th leaf tree has born impressive crops the last two years, over 1000 last season. Much of that went into a terrific batch of plum wine- cheers!
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Fresh picked Toka and Superior plums, just getting into the bulk of Toka crop, Superior finishing up. Superior has been especially juicy this year- exploding so!
Warm sunny weather forecasted, bodes well for these Vermont Plums. I’ve had a few already that have reminded me why I like this variety so much- thin skin, meaty, mango sweetness.
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I skipped out thinning a pair of young trees aND instead braced them up under the loads. Whoops, I think this was a mistake, as the fruit is starting to ripen and is quite bland. Hopefully the trees won’t suffer any long term consequences. Impressive for a picture anyway!
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Great pictures,Jesse.What variety are in the last two photos?
The Vermont scions took very well for me. Brady
Good question on the variety, I grafted a run of ten plums four years back to test how easy prunus was to bench graft, and lost my labels along the way! Somewhere I have a list of the varieties of scionwood I got at the swap…it is one of the regular offerings from FedcoTrees. I was leaning towards Pembina as a possibility.
Glad the scion wood worked out for you, maybe next year fruit…
Fantastic photos Jesse. Inspirational.