Sierra Plum is an old Dave Wilson Nursery variety that’s been very reliable here in low-chill Southern California, the tree loaded while the adjacent Santa Rosa plum has only 2 fruits on it. The quality is outstanding; firm and meaty, with a real sweet-tart zing. They keep very well for a plum, sitting on the countertop for a week and still being firm. I’m not sure why DWN dropped it, probably because they had a lot of good patented varieties to replace it. Supposedly it hails from the Miner '49er days of the Sierra Nevada Gold Rush. The tree is vigorous and will get big; it also tends to be biannual and needs to be thinned to get the best crop. No pests or disease here with it, but the birds have been testing it to see when the fruits are just right to ravage.
4 Likes
Looks rad.
Nice tree you got there-- enjoy!
Yes,those look good. Brady
Looks good, taste great, and disease resistant. Sounds like my kind of fruit.
Beautiful plums!
I like old varieties because I can propagate them, use them for multigrafts, and I get to taste some old fashioned pre-industrial ag flavors. This year I added several grafts using old variety scion - Hanska plum, La Crescent plum, and Ember. I’ve already made a wish list for next year. Anxious to taste them!
That Sierra has a great story too. That adds a lot to the experience.
Thanks so much for putting that up. Looks like a variety that I need to track down for trials out here in our orchard in Phoenix.
Beautiful tree, really like the color of these plums. I looked them up to find a growing range and it says they are about the size of an egg. Yours look bigger than that in the photo. Are these the same ones also called Oregon Plum?
I suspect they’d probably grow here, but may suffer from the high heat and humidity that they would be unaccustomed to in their natural area.
Appleseed;
Gold Country in the Sierra Nevada foothills can have cool, snowy winters, but summers are influenced by the central valley heat and can have weeks of weather in the 100F+; we have 110F heat and lousy humidiy come September that gives them a test too.
Really? Wow I wouldn’t have guessed that. I’m not sure why, but I assumed a dryer western high elevation type climate.
Maybe we could trade some wood next year?