What type of plum would you recommend that blooms later in the season? I have a couple of Japanese plums now that bloom too early every year. They are already blooming this year. 3 out of the last 4 years now they have bloomed and then we had a late freeze. Last year we had a early spring and the trees were completely loaded. I planted a Santa Rosa and a Burbank this year to see if they will do better. I have enough room to plant as many as I want.
Generally speaking European plums, especially the prune types bloom later. But there are no guarentees that they will every year. If you are in the SE USA, you might find disease pressure prohibitive with European plums. Also if your plums are blooming now, you might need something with a different chilling requirement. Where do you live, and what is the climate like? God bless.
Marcus
Beach plums bloom latest.
What varieties of Japanese plums do you have that are blooming now. I’m in SE Georgia 8b and my Chickasaw and Japanese X Chickasaw plum hybrid have had very little bud swelling so far. I’m wondering if your plums are Gulf Series plums, and those indeed will likely bloom too early in Zone 8A because their chilling requirement is so low. God bless.
Marcus
Last year, my shiro plum was the very first thing to bloom in the entire landscape. There was a cloud of bees around the tree because nothing else was blooming yet. Of course there was no pollination partner. It’s very annoying.
There’s a late Santa Rosa available and many pluots, like Flavor King, come ripe in August. Flavor Grenade is a September ripe, sometimes into October. However, these may not solve your problem since they usually bloom at the same time, since Santa Rosa pollinates most of them.
The weather is such a cruel mistress…
Not sure the exact variety. I got them cheap because the tags were off them so I don’t know the exact variety. Though when they do make they are loaded and very sweet. I usually try different varieties of trees and if I don’t like them I figure I can graft a different variety to them. I am lucky I have plenty of land so space is no problem
It’s nice having plenty of space. When it comes to plums not all 8a climates are equal. If you have a hot and humid climate like we do in the SE United States then a lot of plum varieties likely will not work for you. If say you are in a less humid climate you have a lot more options available to you.
If you are in a wet hot climate, making a wrong choice and introducing disease susceptible varieties does have the cumulative effect of lessening your ability to grow stone fruit overall. If a tree gets bacterial stem canker that spot and the area around that spot will be no good for growing stone fruit for six years.
Given the earliness of your plum bloom given that you are in Hardiness Zone 8A implies that most likely you are having a warm winter and have a very low chill plum. Probably your best bet is to find out what the average number of chill hours you normally get in your area and choose varieties that require a hundred or couple hundred hours below what you typically get.
Here is the thing. The sort of plum that I would expect to try to bloom in a Zone 8a climate this time of year would be things along the lines of Gulf Rose, Gulf Beauty and the like. These are not just low chill plums, but they are to my understanding about as bullet proof to diseases.
Just a couple of days ago I introduced a new thread called “Chickasaw Plum Inventory”. If you are in a hot moist Climate that has a lot of disease pressure but where the winters are too long for Gulf Series plums, really your best bet in my opinion are old Chickasaw varieties. There was a lot of hybridizing work in the 60s, 70s even into the 80s where a lot of Chickasaw X Japanese Plum hybrids came out, namely the Auburn University and Byron Series plums. These had firmer more “Asian” like fruits, and ever sense around the deep south these are what you see in nurseries along with pure Asian varieties like Santa Rosa. However, I am of the opinion that in much of Zone 8 in humid parts of the US, non of these plums are really disease resistant enough to be reliable. I think your best bet are the old Chickasaw varieties such as Guthrie, Odom and Excelsior. Some of us have some unknown Chickasaw varieties that have been passed down to us through our network of family and friends that are of unknown varieties. I have a tree that is like this which produces suckers that I occasionally give away.
Given your 8A climate, you might want to try Robusto which is a hybrid that’s disease resistant enough to survive in my yard. Beyond that, if you don’t go with a Chickasaw variety, you might try some of the Byron Series plums such as Segundo, Byron Gold and several others. I really can’t recommend any European varieties for a hot and humid Zone 8 Climate even though it would be a late bloomer. Oh, another you can try which is really a root stock that produces delicious fruit and seems to be pretty disease resistant for hot and humid climates is Mariana. It’s typically used as root stock for European plums. I have one that suckers all the time, and might have one to spare. It’s small fruit but really tasty. God bless.
Marcus
Thanks for the reply. I have a wild Chickasaw plum I got from my neighbor this year and they seem to do really good here. I planted it out in the pasture to let it spread. I like using them to make jelly with. Right now we are not expecting any freezing weather for the next 10 days at least so maybe they will set this year.