This is my first Flavor Grenade. I am peaty sure its ready to pick but I just wanted a second opinion. It developed a lot of color last week and is exiting the rock hard phase. I though last year was bad for plums, 40 green plums stolen by birds and squirrels. This is the only plum out of 4 trees. what makes this plum even more impressive is I accidently broke the graft off this spring and reattached it with string and tears and sealant.
I pick mine most of the time,even before they turn red like that,with a fair amount of crunchiness.Brady
Pluots sure have interesting colors. They are amazing! So they turn that red? Mine is still red and yellow.
For me, FG turns much more green like you can see on the Dave Wilson website. But with the damage on the fruit, it probably ripened much faster than it would normally and probably won’t be able to finish a full ripening. Just my opinion, but my guess would be that it doesn’t improve from here. Hopefully better luck next year. I find that if I only have one or two fruit on the tree, the odds of me getting a fully ripe sample is very low. At least it helps the trees grow better with little fruit to ripen.
of course next year with be my year for sure.
I’m suspicious that this fruit is FG. In San Diego mine never get red like this. Mostly an orange blush over yellow green. I would expect your fruit to be complete mush if that ripe!
So yes it was ready and it was good. It was better then the flavor grenade I bought at the store last year. Prior to the bird pecking the color was the same as store bought flavor grenades. The bird peck was infested with ants but that was ok, they were delicious too. I think turning red is a sign of overripe ness in this plum, the far side that was still more yellow was more crisp and bright in flavor.
These are some of my FG’s from a few days ago. Not the best picture but you can see the evolution of the fruit from the darker color on the top to the increasing green on the lower part. Ones on the right are probably 2-3 weeks away from their peak, a week or two longer for the one at the top. We had a really late bloom this year and most of the fruit was damaged by the 114 degree day we had back in July.
