Welcome to the New Plums Forum!

Where you can talk to others who are plum crazy too!

https://permies.com/f/436/plums

I want to grow plums that are so delicious and juicy that you have to lean over the sink to eat them. One of the only ways to get these types of plums is to grow them ourselves!

Anyone growing some good plums?!

Thanks Steve for starting all these great fruit forums! My passion as well. I will post some stuff in the next few days.

One of my fav fruit. we use to make jam, juice, and use in cook food.
this fruit suites hilly area

I love my chicksaw plum. It's a prolific fruiter and excellent early season bee forage. The fruits are small and slightly tart when ripe. If you like sour and crisp fruit, they're also excellent a bit before they ripen. My wife gets mad at me for eating them before they're ripe.  No pest problems for this native. A week ago this tree was coated with a heavy load of ice, but no branches broke and the flower buds that should open up in a couple weeks appear undamaged. Amazing.  I'm so fond of this plum I've been trying to get friends and neighbors to plant them. You should too if you're within its native range.

I'm not so sure about the santa rosa I planted. It never seems quite happy with life here. This summer will be the first season I could possibly expect fruit. We'll see how that goes.

Plums are one of my favorite fruits, too!  I don't care much for the Japanese-type plums that are what is usually sold in the grocery stores; I like Damsons and the prune plums much better (they actually have some flavor).  My grandmother had a small Damson tree in her yard on the Oregon Coast, and there were prune-plums in the old family orchard.  Mom and Grandma would can quarts and quarts of those, making sure to leave at least one pit in the jar for extra flavor, and we ate them as a treat during the winter, usually in a bowl with a little cream added.  Sometimes they would go into a cobbler or some other dessert, but usually it was enough to just have the plums in a bowl with cream.

Planted a Santa Rosa last year and putting in a Damson this spring. I tried a Damson last year and it quickly had canker so I yanked it out before investing all the time in a losing effort.

The food forest that I help to steward has two very productive plum trees, not sure of the variety but most likely Japanese or European . Problem is that plum curculio, black knot, and brown rot ruin all of the fruit! Out of desperation we're considering copper spray this year but worry about drift; there is a herd of goats within 25' and many people passing by daily. Has anyone on this forum managed to overcome similar problems?

We have two plum trees going in this spring, both Mooer's Arctic Plum.

I'm really excited about this plum variety. The earliest reference I can find is a newspaper clipping from 1884 from the Vermont Watchmen and State Journal. The variety appears to have originated in Aroostok County, Maine. There is some evidence as well that it did well in Woodstock, New Brunswick, Canada, which is about a 45 minute drive by highway from our homestead. I will definitely be diving more into its history if I can!

Margo Michaels wrote:The food forest that I help to steward has two very productive plum trees, not sure of the variety but most likely Japanese or European . Problem is that plum curculio, black knot, and brown rot ruin all of the fruit! Out of desperation we're considering copper spray this year but worry about drift; there is a herd of goats within 25' and many people passing by daily. Has anyone on this forum managed to overcome similar problems?

I don't know how the copper spray might affect the goats because I don't know what else is in it besides copper.  But goats require a great deal of copper; in fact, many of the health problems domestic goats have can be cured by giving them extra copper.  So it might not be the problem for them that you think.  Now, sheep would be a different story.  

If you have access to an agricultural extension agent, they might be able to help you find out if the copper spray was likely to cause any problems for humans or livestock.  Copper has been used for a long time, so there should have been research done.

I got some true seed for wild american plum (Prunus americana) in a seed exchange earlier this month. I plan on stratifying the pits in my refrigerator in some damp sand for about one month before planting them. Hopefully wild plums don't sucker too much. Perhaps I should grow them in a hedgerow.

Ryan M Miller wrote:I got some true seed for wild american plum (Prunus americana) in a seed exchange earlier this month. I plan on stratifying the pits in my refrigerator in some damp sand for about one month before planting them. Hopefully wild plums don't sucker too much. Perhaps I should grow them in a hedgerow.

I believe that most of them do sucker heavily.  If you plant them in a hedgerow, be sure to plant them very close together.  They need to be close for good pollination.

I have a large plum collection. I got it through seed exchange at first and then purchased seeds and plants from other nurseries. The seed exchange is  a great way to get new species and grow them outside of their range. If you want to exchange seeds with me this fall, let me know. Hard to say in the middle of winter what will be the crop.

I have two Brooks plum trees. They are an off shoot of the Italian plum, but they are four times the size. They have a honey like flavor and sweetness. They make the most incredible pies, and the comes out with the consistency of firm peach pie. I dry them in my dehydrator and make fruit roll ups. And they are just plain great to eat right off the tree. We start picking them when they are still slightly green, really good. I'm in Western Washington and get a huge crop nearly every year. I planted one over 25 years ago and another one about 12 years ago, both were bare root from a local nursery. They start producing fairly heavy in about 3 years from planting, but the fruit got really sweet and flavorful after about 5 years. My older tree seems to produce more and taste better than the younger one.
Brooks Plum, everybody should have at least one!

I just so happen to have a plum tree story.

When the kids were still sorta young, I planted a plum tree along the side of the house. I could see it from the livingroom windows, and when it was in bloom or fruit, it was a gorgeous thing to behold. It started as a bare rooted, maybe 3-4 foot tall twig, but was soon perhaps 10 feet tall with a 4-6 foot spread and would be covered in fresh fruit. The skin was nearly a blackish red and the flesh nearly as dark. My kids loved to get the fresh plums to eat. I got it in my head one day to make some plum jam from that years harvest, and was collecting the jars and other things I would need to make it. Since excess cash to spend on this was at a premium, it was going to take me a few weeks to gather everything. And the plums were getting ripe!

Every year, after the fruit was done, I would pour a couple bags of steer manure around the base and out to just past the current drip line, then water it in really good at least one day each week. Sorta like doing a manure tea, but in situ! That was my secret for good harvests each year. It worked like a charm.

I'd gone to work one morning, like every other day, thinking it was time to get the jam done that weekend. Unfortunately, my POS husband of the time thought I'd be pleased that he made some money from the harvest, and had plucked about 40 pounds and taken it to a local fruit stand to sell them. I was beyond LIVID. I told him to get them back, I ranted at him that he knew I was going to make jam. He gave me the cash money and that was the end of it. There were only about 2 dozen fruits left, so the jam was not getting made.

My son, to this day, misses those tasty and sweet treats from that tree, which we have since figured out was probably a Burgundy Plum. https://www.davewilson.com/product-information/product/burgundy-plum (I keep a binder for my garden incarnations, complete with the tags from trees and such. The tag I kept from the new tree says that the Burgundy was "a chance seedling discovered at Dinuba, California, probably a Mariposa x Eldorado, introduced in 1970) I even tried to grow another at my current location, but I think the land here wasn't good for them, or something else happened, because I only got perhaps 2 dozen fruits total over it's 4 year lifespan. It died and I've since ripped it out.  I have not replaced it with anything, choosing to leave the space open. There is now a raised bed just behind where it stood, so the additional sunshine is good for whatever I put in that bed.

Ken, I could send you some Brooks plum seed. I'm in the Pacific Northwest, if you are in this area these will do well. You'll havta let me know when the time to get seeds is though.

In my area, the native Chicksaw Plum is great. As proof, here are two photos taken less than three weeks apart. The tree carried a heavy load of ice just when its buds were emerging. No bother though. It is blooming strong now and should have a heavy crop by early summer.

This house came with three standard plum trees a yellow mirrabelle a huge plum around 7-8 meters tall with many cracked branches that have half fallen down and then re rooted, it produces small oval purple plums which are sweet. and a big 6m tall greengage both of the last two have Phellinus pomaceus infections, I have added another plum unfortunately I bought it on sale and cannot remember what on earth it is, the label is probably somewhere around but who knows where. I want to add a Victoria plum and another greengage to replace the big one. 5m+ trees are impossible to pick from so although both of the big trees produce well we actually had to buy plums from the neighbours.

So I am in Northern Mongolia, very near the Russian border. We are zone 2/3 by temps and vegetation that I see here. We started a permaculture project here about 7 years ago and are hoping to develop new fruit varieties, that are viable in this climate, through cross pollination and seed propagation. About 5 years ago I acquired my first plums, 7 yellow plum seeds from a government research station about 100km south of us. They were reportedly from the Ussuri River area in eastern Russia. I grew all 7 of them and they produced 7 distinctly different plum trees/bushes. Some are low growing, others more upright, some have 1 to 2 flowers per cluster while others have 2 to 5 flowers per cluster. The first tree, UH-1X,  started flowering and fruiting 3 years ago and produced about 40 small, dark red with red flesh, cling stone fruit. Two of the other trees started flowering 2 years ago but did not set fruit, one of them, UH-4X, died due to some unknown soil issue,  while UH-1X produced about 150 fruit. This year 4 of the remaining UH plums flowered and 3, UH-1, 3 and 5 produced fruit. The fruit on UH-3X and 5X larger than UH-1X and both were a yellow/orange/red with yellow flesh and free stone. UH-2X bloomed profusely but did not set a single fruit even though all of these plums are growing within meters of each other and there was also an American plum and sandcherries blooming at the same time. We also had a bee hive in the middle of all of this. So it would appear that UH-2X is having a pollination problem. 2 years ago we brought in plum and chum branches from Saskatchewan and Russia and now have a total of 35 varieties growing. We are expecting some of these to bloom this year and see if some of these will pollinate UH-2X. Last year we collected about 500 seeds from our plum harvest and will be growing them out this spring. With our sandcherries and various plums, with our bees, we have a fair mix of pollen moving around. We have a 10ha (22ac) piece of land where we are doing our tree trials.

I can't remember which author it was, but I've read that some plums literally need to be touching in order for pollination to occur.  You might try making a plum thicket (something wild plums normally do naturally) with a good pollinator in the middle and the others around it close enough to touch branches.

Robert Baerg wrote:So I am in Northern Mongolia, very near the Russian border. We are zone 2/3 by temps and vegetation that I see here. We started a permaculture project here about 7 years ago and are hoping to develop new fruit varieties, that are viable in this climate, through cross pollination and seed propagation. About 5 years ago I acquired my first plums, 7 yellow plum seeds from a government research station about 100km south of us. They were reportedly from the Ussuri River area in eastern Russia. I grew all 7 of them and they produced 7 distinctly different plum trees/bushes. Some are low growing, others more upright, some have 1 to 2 flowers per cluster while others have 2 to 5 flowers per cluster. The first tree, UH-1X,  started flowering and fruiting 3 years ago and produced about 40 small, dark red with red flesh, cling stone fruit. Two of the other trees started flowering 2 years ago but did not set fruit, one of them, UH-4X, died due to some unknown soil issue,  while UH-1X produced about 150 fruit. This year 4 of the remaining UH plums flowered and 3, UH-1, 3 and 5 produced fruit. The fruit on UH-3X and 5X larger than UH-1X and both were a yellow/orange/red with yellow flesh and free stone. UH-2X bloomed profusely but did not set a single fruit even though all of these plums are growing within meters of each other and there was also an American plum and sandcherries blooming at the same time. We also had a bee hive in the middle of all of this. So it would appear that UH-2X is having a pollination problem. 2 years ago we brought in plum and chum branches from Saskatchewan and Russia and now have a total of 35 varieties growing. We are expecting some of these to bloom this year and see if some of these will pollinate UH-2X. Last year we collected about 500 seeds from our plum harvest and will be growing them out this spring. With our sandcherries and various plums, with our bees, we have a fair mix of pollen moving around. We have a 10ha (22ac) piece of land where we are doing our tree trials.

It sounds like Canada plums (Prunus nigra) might grow well in your region, but considering the high diversity of Prunus species in Asia there should be at least one species of plum native to your region. The first that come to mind are actually apricots (Prunus mandshurica, Prunus sibirica), but two other species look promising: one from Tajikistan (Prunus darvasica) and another (Prunus ulmifolia) from Kazakhstan near where the wild almaty apples grow.

I have Prunus nigra growing here now but it has not flowered yet. Hopefully they will begin to bloom this spring. In Canada it has proven to be the best pollinator across almost all the plum varieties. And yes we have wild apricots, Prunus sibirica, here. We have used it for plum rootstocks with mixed results. Our sandcherries have proven to be the best plum rootstock so far. I am keeping this thread just for plum discussions but we also have several varieties of apricots growing on sibirica rootstocks and are trying to get some of those Kazakhstan varieties. We also have a bunch of apples varieties growing and are hoping to get some of the Kazakh apple varieties this fall.

Just a quick update on the plum situation here. My prunus nigra bloomed for the first time, with about 30 to 40 flowers and lo and behold this year all of my plum trees have significant fruit on them.

I live in Maine and can't find a place selling Mooer's Arctic Plum, tree or scion, in the US. I see Cornhill Nursery selling them over there in New Brunswick. I would really like to have one being so close to where they originated. Trying to import them from Canada looks like a difficult and expensive venture. If anyone knows of a place on this side of the border with any, please let me know.