Anybody growing and having good success with Santa Rosa in zone 5? Found a couple at a local store today that were marked down for $19 a piece and thought about buying them, but I knew I had seen most people in warm climates talking about them. They wont likely disappear any time soon and maybe they will mark them down even further. Typical Big Box store trees 8’ tall and had a few fruit in a tiny pot.
I’m in 6 on cusp of 5 and I seem to be on the edge of its survivability through test winters, or perhaps test early spring lows. It does suffer some cambium damage here that more hardy varieties like Methely and Shiro don’t get. it is also one of the less reliable bearers and seldom over crops, which on a good year can be good but on a bad year like this one it is bad. .
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Have had one for 8 yrs, it has seemed hardy here in z5a but not very productive compared to other hybrids or euros in my patch. Tasty though! Tired of waiting, I grafted a large portion over this spring to Lavinia.
Thanks. It seems borderline at best and I really dont want to mess with a entire tree then. I will graft a branch onto another tree sometime if I really want to give it a try.
I grow Santa Rosa plum in zone5 for 5 years. tree itself is hardy enough, but, does not bear much fruits
had beauty in 5a at our old place and it did fine, only damage I saw was one year when we had several dips into -25 or so, some new wood (a lot, but nowhere near enough to kill the tree) blistered from the temps
it bore well every year.
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The weeping Santa Rosa I guess tastes better and will bear more fruit too. That is the one to get.
Never had santa rosa, but Satsuma seems to work here so far… i’m sure i’ll see some damage when we hit -20Fs…
That’s good I have that tree too. Second leaf. it had very few flowers, no set at all.
Mine did that last year…had lots of flowers///zero fruit…we’re better this year.
It set very good on my “frankentree” and decent on the nectarine seedling… I’ll thin these soon. I need to spray them a little more. PC is very active right now.
I’m going to add a lone tree of WSR for sure.
Satsuma is also somewhat fragile here. It probably is about more than zones when trees get injured cambium from weather events. I get to look at lots of trees in my nursery and they are being transplanted a couple of times before being moved to permanent locations, which increases stress. Satsuma, Black Amber, Queen Rosa, Ruby Queen and Santa Rosa suffer notably more cambium burn than Shiro or Methely with the same treatment. In my orchard, both of my Santa Rosas are scarred.
My winter and/or early spring temps may fluctuate more than in the Z5’s reporting here.
My Satsuma does not suffer cambium burn.
Flower buds got zapped in early April freeze. Prior to that it was dormant enough and survived -10,-12 F in Feb ( only a couple of days).
No bloom on Satsuma. Ton of blooms on Shiro. I spoke too soon about Shiro could be partial fruitful. So far, all tiny fruitlets yellowed and fell off.
I grafted about 10 varieties of plums andpluots on Shiro, hopefully, to avoid future pollination issue.
I am in a are of zone 5 where temperatures wildly fluctuate. We can be 80 degrees one day in “spring” and then close to freezing a day or two later. We do not have predictable weather by any means.
One thing nice about Wisconsin…most of the time./…we stay cold until late…so most stuff stays very dormant until at the earliest early April. For the most part we keep snowcover into mid March or even later. In winter a warm day around here is mid 40Fs (say Jan/Feb)… . even that is rare. We usually avg a day or more of temps that do not go above 0F. Avg lows the past ten years…i’d say is in that -20F to -22F range…
I would say this year we are ahead of what i’d consider normal. March 2012 was similar… Not sure if this is a trend or just some cycle we are in.