Greetings all: I’m looking at the possibility of attempting to grow pluots here in SE Georgia. What are other people’s experiences with them in the Deep South, if any? Are they taking the disease pressure? Are you having issues with brown rot? Are you having pollination issues? What other plum varieties do they bloom with. It would be especially good to know when they bloom relative to Santa Rosa, since the University of Georgia has published a bloom chart indicating when a lot of southern varieties bloom relative to Santa Rosa.
I know someone in Waycross GA who seems to be having luck with them. Three strains he has that I’m looking at are Emerald Drop, Splash and Dappled Dandy. I’m also potentially interested in Flavor Granade provided it’s has a resonable shot of doing OK here, and I can find scion for it. Thanks.
I’m not in Georgia, but I think it’s safe to say rot is guaranteed. For me the asians and pluot more or less have overlapping flowering times. Spring Satin was originally bred in Georgia. I would look into how well they set fruit. I have ditched a few varieties over stingy fruit set. I’ve actually been moving away from pluot to the hybrids.
I’m not inclined to trust the chilling information from Ison given the nature of the sources that say differently. I think that the 750 chilling hours claim originated from the USDA experiment station where Spring Satin introduced. Byron Georgia which is where the experiment station is located is slightly NE of Atlanta, in a Hardiness Zone 8A high elevation climate. I’m in a 9a near sea level climate about 50 miles from the Atlantic. Now it’s possible that the 750-hour chilling requirement was more assumed rather than tested. I would love to know if anyone out there is getting Spring Satin to flower and fruit properly with 500 or less chilling hours. If the answer is yes, then I would like to try it.
I just confirmed that the 750 chilling-hour requirement claim originated with the breeder, Dr. Okie, formerly at the USDA Experiment Station in Byron, GA.
I’m pretty sure you know how to graft, so why not hedge your bets and simply graft some spring satin scion onto a mature peach, plum, or apricot tree. That way you should know within a year or two if it will produce in your climate. You can always graft on more later if you feel like it’s worth growing in your area.
My area doesn’t have the heavy disease pressure of down south, but spring satin seems quite disease resistant so far. It seems far more resistant to black knot and leaf infections than my other Japanese plum/cot/pluot varieties.
I would check out scotts stone fruit report. He has quite a few of them. He is a couple states north of you, but the east coast conditions will still be fairly similar to you in most ways. On the east coast there are a number of pluot that do not like to set. I would confirm varieties with others on the east coast. Dapple Dandy is a machine for me. Flavor Supreme was a waste of time. Spring Satin I’m about to get rid of. Flavor Delight is also a machine. The rest of mine are asian and hybrids.
Good to know. The only person I know with lots of experience in the Eastern US is Scott Smith (Maryland), and he has lots of problems with brown rot on that one. If it brown rots bad in Maryland, it won’t have a chance in Georgia.
Often the chill requirement is over estimated initially to avoid any liability. There’s less risk to over estimate rather than under estimate. Then with experience the real number can be dialed in.
Growing 4 n 1 splash, geo pride, emerald drop, and flavor grenade. Also growing flavor king and flavor supreme on separate trees. No problems with disease or pollination (true zone 8). The 4n1 I grew in Kingwood (microclimate 8) Houston bloomed overlapping from beginning with no problems. Grew dapple dandy years ago but it would not sweeten. The 4n1 currently growing took a while for overlapping bloom, but past 2 years they were loaded. They are growing in a true zone 8. Everything super sweet. My favorite is flavor grenade, but animals prefer flavor supreme. They were all gone this year when I got back from Houston. I garden in Houston, SW and Mid Louisiana.
Planted our Plumcot in Spring 2021 and it has not had fruit yet. We did have a hard freeze in April of this year right during bloom, that killed the blooms on most other fruits.
Note that I graft my own plums because under Southeast Georgia conditions plums do much better on a chickasaw cultivar rootstock. When buying muscadine vines, Ison’s is my nursery of choice. My sense is that they depend on wholesale nurseries for their fruit tree stock.
