Great tasting plum. This is my first plum to ripen.
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It always ripens first for me too. In fact, I usually have to net the
whole tree, in order to keep the birds away from it.
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I have a graft of that… hope some year it manages to fruit here.
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Mine too. But all my plums are ripening 3 to 4 weeks earlier than normal. Spring Satin here usually ripens the 1st into the 2nd week of June.
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Wow, thats early! Looks great!
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Looks wonderful I have a two year old graft that has one plum but not nearly as mature as yours! Thanks for posting, hope mine survives the animals and birds, might bag it!
Dennis
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I bagged with Clemson bags. Possum or raccoon ate 90% of them. Need to find better solution!
I just picked these this morning and by tomorrow the bowl will be empty. Not to brag, but this is the fourth bowl this week and I haven’t even made a dent in the tree. Every one should grow this pluot, which was specifically hybridized for the South
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Looks great Ray.
I agree, for growers in the south.
Bloom time ?
I’m in 7b and have occasional late frost
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It blooms quite early. This year was a good spring frost year for me, and it set about 10 fruit on a 4 yr old tree. Plan is to use active frost protection going forward.
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Spring Satin blooms early along with many other varieties. Frost kills most of the fruit.
I got about 20 fruit
Hi Bill
My Spring Satin graft is nearing ripeness with a nice color change recently. I noted it’s one of your earliest to ripen. Should I wait for a softness before picking?
Dennis
Kent Wa
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They turn purple long before they are ripe. I’d just pull one every so often to check for ripeness. I start checking when you can feel some give.
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I like them while firm and when they soften a little. Just depends on your preference. They get sweeter when they soften.
My small spring satin tree has only been in the ground a couple of years, this summer it produced its first fruit. Only 2 to be precise, and both were rather disappointing. I ate the first one the last week of June and even though it was soft and nicely colored up it was still very sour. I made sure to wait over a week to give the last one a chance to sweeten up. This one was sweet enough, but I found the flavor rather unimpressive.
I realize the flavor may improve as the tree matures, but it would need to improve considerably to rank even close to my mid tier plums. The size was also rather disappointing, as both plumcots were a fair bit smaller than most of my other plums as well. I was really looking forward to this tree bearing fruit, but I must admit I found Spring Satin rather underwhelming at this early point in its production.
I sure hope it improves over time or I may end up converting it to other varieties more to my liking.
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We all have taste differences and what is good to me doesn’t mean that it’s universal. If I didn’t like the taste I would also graft over to another variety. A bigger problem for me is getting a variety that will consistently survive the early cold snaps in weather.
I agree, taste is obviously a very personal thing. I felt let down I guess because of high expectations for spring satin. In all other respects it is a very good tree with lots of positives.
For me I find its vigor to be perfect to keep its size under 8 ft tall. Its limbs have a good spreading habit. It is very easy to have the tree take the shape you want by pruning. Some varieties always seem to want to fight you when you are trying to direct their growth, not spring satin. It also seems very black knot resistant (at least up to this point), which is a huge positive. There are lots of good things to say about Spring Satin.
I may simply add some other varieties to it via chip budding this week as a backup plan in case the taste of the plums still isn’t to my liking after the tree matures more.
My problem isn’t with spring freezes, it is more a pollination issue with my early plums. The weather is often very cool, and extremely wet when most of my early varieties are in bloom. This is pretty common for my location, not much freezing weather, but tons of rain in during the bloom period. I have purchased mason bees in the past, but I’d really need to beef up their population to have it help much. There’s really not many insects that want to fly about doing pollination work if it’s pouring outside. It was too wet to even consider doing hand pollination this year.
Many of my plum trees have little if any fruit this year, with a few exceptions, (Shiro always seems to come through). Most of my trees are still very young and I’m sure they will be more consistent as they mature and have tons of blooms each spring. Fingers crossed at least for that happening.
I haven’t given up on spring satin yet, but it’s definitely on probation for a couple of years.
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