I did an impulse purchase 2 days ago from raintree nursery. In a different thread, it was pointed out that I might have been a bit hasty. I have not grown plums before (I have only grown montmorency cherries). I was seduced by the descriptions on raintree’s website. Here is what I bought. There is still time to modify the order.
Italian Plum should pollinate Geneva Mirabelle and Italian is self-fertile (I think). I think they are fine choices. I would stick with them and graft some different euro plums onto them when they get a little bigger.
Italian prune plums practically grow wild here in Seattle, I think it will do very well for you, and you can always graft it over to something more showy if you decide that’s what you want later. I’ve never had a mirabelle, but I’ve barely talked myself out of buying a tree a few times. I probably will at some point when I decide I’ve found somewhere in my increasingly crowded yard to plant it.
Having enough room is not necessarily a pre-requisite to trialing a wide variety of plums- most of my trees have at least two varieties on them and E. plums aren’t very difficult to graft to several varieties, especially on vigorous rootstocks like Myro.
Are any of you growers in the Seattle area plum fanatics who’ve experimented with many varieties there? I’ve seen Seneca mentioned as a variety that does well in Seattle, and, as grown here, is vastly superior to Italian plums for fresh eating by my palate. But my favs in NY may have little to do with what does best in Seattle.
Based on the recs I’ve seen, it seems that later varieties may have difficulty ripening in your low-heat region, that also tends towards a deficit of blue sky days, as I understand it. The best E. plums ripen to sweetness that comes from brix between 20 to about 25 and my favorites sauce up well when cooked, although for some recipes plums that stay firm may be better, but I love a plum sauce. I think I’ve just used up the last of them I stored in my freezer and now only have halves of Empress to draw from, which do not sauce up well. My wife can use them for tarts.
I have an Italian plum and another similar variety whose name escapes me at the moment and they are small plums with high flavor but not the luscious texture of my best eating plums. I also prefer more size and Italian plums tend to be light bearers as well (so the high quality may partly be the result of a high leaf to fruit ratio). Cornell came up with Castleton as an improved Italian plum type- it ripens a bit earlier but is also relatively small. However, it i s one of the most consistent croppers I grow and keeps getting sweeter until the flesh is fully amber.
Still, I consider the fruit of Italian plums superior to Stanley. To me, the best E. plums go from having green flesh to amber when allowed to fully ripen on the tree (not soft but with some give to pressure). Green flesh never seems as sweet. Here, I’ve decided that Empress is not my favorite late variety because the flesh doesn’t seem to really amber up and it isn’t quite as sweet as something like Valor, although it is probably the most productive plum I grow here and as precocious as any. It is also quite large. However, I don’t think those later plums would necessarily ripen up in Seattle.
I have a spouse who inexplicable hates plums (won’t even try other varieties), so I’ve not planted any plums at all. We had a prune plum in our yard in a previous house we rented, though, and it always held lots of sweet/juicy fruit. Not the greatest texture for fresh eating, but I figured that’s why they are called prune plums, really best when dried?
One of our good friends has a plum tree that came with their house that I’ve always assumed is an Italian prune, but it could be an improved form I guess. They aren’t tree people, they completely neglect the tree, which grows in a weedy/overgrown corner of the yard and gets zero pruning, thinning, fertilizing, or pest control. Every year it holds a seemingly impossible amount of fruit and they are always sugary juice bombs that my kids enjoy when we visit. Volunteer seedlings have come up along their fence line and one of those has also started fruiting.
When I see older plum trees in yards that are loaded with fruit, they are almost always that Italian prune plum shape at least. I don’t know why, really, but they seem to be the plum of choice for many people here. I am sure that there are other euro plums that do well here as well.
So really that’s all I meant, that they seem to grow like weeds and are popular and productive here. Arthur Lee Jacobson’s wonderful book Trees of Seattle, which I highly recommend for anyone in Seattle, gives a list of addresses for large specimens of every tree species in the book, and calls Italian Prune the “most abundant” European plum cultivar in the city; here’s an excerpt:
In Seattle [European plums] are common. We have many cultivars; the most abundant is a European hereabouts called the Italian Prune tree. This kind is relatively long-lived, strong, and can root-sucker rampantly to form extensive thickets. White flowers late March-early April give rise to plums available (early July) late July-late September (late October). Most of the trees are less than 20’ x 5’ yet their maximum dimensions are likely 45’ x 8’. Cited below are chiefly Italian Prune trees.
@Ahmad @ I just ordered Early Italian plum tree. It’s about 2 weeks earlier for harvesting than regular Italian. The regular Italian plum ready to harvest the fruit usually in September. At that time some year it’s time for raining season. So the fruits will have some worms inside . That’s why I prefer Early varieties better choice for me. Thank you so much for referring.
Many plums send out suckers, including Myro, but I’ve always read that plums tend to come close to seed, and with all that fruit, I think it is probable that they have spread all over Seattle by way of seeds, which probably makes them Italian-type plums. Named varieties are clones of the first, although similar seedlings do often crash the party with the same label if they are close enough to the parent tree. No variety I’ve heard of holds fruit for much longer than a month- commercial growers tend to want varieties that require very few pickings- so a tight harvest window. The range of harvest that the article mentions suggests to me that we are talking about a nearly countless number of unnamed varieties that look like Italian plums. The grafted It plums I’ve gotten from nurseries always ripen their fruit for a few weeks beginning in mid to late Aug.
If you ever find a tree that produces bountiful harvests of luscious plums for over two months you should gather some scions and propagate it. Name it after you favorite person and patent it.
What I’m suggesting is that article is talking about various seedling trees with a range of characteristics, including bearing times, but similar size and shape as the original Italian variety.
