Plums: An underrated fruit?

How long has it taken your plum trees to start producing?

I have two Plums planted a couple years ago and they are starting to get a decent amount of growth but I have not seen any flowers. I know that I am just being impatient, but I am wondering if perhaps in my third year I might see something.

Here is to hoping!

Timothy Norton wrote:How long has it taken your plum trees to start producing?

I have two Plums planted a couple years ago and they are starting to get a decent amount of growth but I have not seen any flowers. I know that I am just being impatient, but I am wondering if perhaps in my third year I might see something.

Here is to hoping!

Both of mine didn’t start producing until after they had reached a mature hight. For mine that was 7 feet for one and 10 for the second. I was also told, that if I add compost in spring, they will out their energy into growing bigger, but I don’t know if that’s true

Plums are some of my favourite fruits. But I've never found tasty ones in shops, only farmers markets or fresh from the tree. Shop plums are only good for cooking into chutney, really.

In my part of the world .. central England .. I learned a few years ago that: "Plums are pruned in early spring or mid-summer to avoid infection by silver leaf disease."

Mid-summer means, you're thinning the fruitlets as a by-product if the pruning.

Another potential use for bland plums from the shop, of course is alcohol .. sozzled, vinted or jerkumed!

Interesting discussion of Worcestershire plum jerkum traditions, contrast with plum wine making, commercial offers etc. here: https://twothirstygardeners.co.uk/2013/01/plum-jerkum-pressing-plums-worcestershire-style/

(Two of the roots of my family trace back to not far from Bredon Hill).

We only have one plum tree. The variety is called Bruce. It has been the ground for 4 seasons now and is just beginning to produce.

My homestead has 2 very old yellow plum trees which many people love to eat out of hand, but they're so juicy, they aren't much good for anything else. ( I include ducks, geese and chickens in my "people" category.)

I bought a double grafted tree because I wanted the Italian Prune plum side, which has pretty much taken over (I've since learned that this is very common for double grafts, particularly if the owner doesn't know what they're doing.) It doesn't produce really well every year, but this year I've already taken 22 liters off just for processing, my son's taken a few of liters for fresh eating, and if I don't run out of steam, there looks to be another 10+ liters on the tree if the squirrel doesn't get them in the next 24 hours. (I caught him in the act at 7:30 tonight!)

It turns out that the other half is actually a very pleasant red eating plum. Trouble is that the deer agree and aren't exactly helping that poor branch survive. However, I have a volunteer plum, probably off the yellow tree. I ran out of light today, but tomorrow I will carefully try to dig it out of the planter it's in, transfer it to a tree pot, let it settle for a few weeks, and then I might just try and graft from the red plum. Not sure it's the best time of the year, but I don't trust the deer not to finish the poor thing off.

We have another volunteer plum in the big field. The plums are small but delicious both for eating and for jam. I think we need to shorten it a little in the hopes that it will set more fruit lower down. My orchard ladder is only 10 feet tall. I don't have the mass to safely use a taller one even if I had one.

Tree-ripened plums are genuinely something else. Mine took about four years to really get going but the wait was worth it, the flavor is just miles ahead of anything at the supermarket. The jam carries it properly too, which is more than I can say for most fruit you'd bother preserving.

Dian Green wrote:I love plums but the problems I had were: trying to get pollination partners to match up and the plum curculio weevil. Between those issues we called our plums " the lying freeloaders" due to their lack of production.
While you can salvage some bitten fruit, it all looks ugly and most didn't make it to ripe. I also didn't like that there really didn't seem to be many ways to deal with the bugs aside from sprays that I will not use. Even distracting them didn't work since they would damage my pears a bit too.
The Italian plum was a bit slow getting started but once it got going, it got huge and very productive. I am hoping to put in several of those, here on our new lot.

We have a lot of native cherry trees in sandy Central WI, zone 4b. Those are attacked by the curculio pest... it works a s crop trap: They leave my Mount Royal plums alone. I have one such plum in my chicken yard, and the chickens have been excellent sentinels guarding the fruit trees inside the enclosure. The first year, I had a lot of bugs in my plums, but then, I didn't have many chickens.
For natural pest control on plums, this is what they recommend:
Kaolin Clay (Surround): This is the gold standard for organic growers. It is a natural mineral powder mixed with water and sprayed to coat the tree in a powdery white film. It completely confuses the weevils so they cannot grip or lay eggs on the plums. Apply at petal fall and reapply every 7–10 days or after heavy rains. Find some talc free here: https://www.simplypureproducts.com/inventorybaby/baby-powder
The "Tarp and Shake" Method: Early in the morning when the beetles are cold and sluggish, lay a large white sheet or tarp under the tree. Give the branches a firm shake or thud with a padded stick. The curculios will play dead, drop onto the tarp, and you can dump them into soapy water.
Fruit Bagging: If you only have a few small trees, you can physically protect the growing fruit using specialized mesh or paper bags (like Clemson peach bags) tied around the stems once the plums are slightly larger.
I see that you are in zone 6, Ontario, so Hi, Canadian neighbor! I'm always looking for plums that are freestone and will make it in our winters. There's a nursery in your neck of the woods that I'm going to order from, as they specialize in trees that can brave the cold. It's your St. Laurence Nursery.
Do you know them? I'm planning on Opal, Italian plum and Stanley. What do you have?

Years ago I was exploring a creek with the kids in the middle of our thriving North Carolina suburb, when we discovered a wide open field, four or five acres of wild land still hiding between apartment slabs. We had a ball learning about wildflowers, bird nests and bugs, found a huge mass of blackberry bushes, and hid out under an expansive thicket of fruit trees. By summer's end, those trees were loaded with small, sweet, yellow fruit that made great jam. I would later learn that these were Chickasaw plums, native to the entire southeastern United States, only now seldom seen (or even popularly known) due to habitat loss.

Since we started transitioning our little half-acre from invasive shrubs to native species, we have re-introduced them to their natural habitat. So far we've planted fifteen saplings; every single one has taken to the space and is thriving, even in the face of significant summer water shortages. The plan is to let them spread as they will along the borders of our woodlands, encouraging them to send out suckers while we continue to hack away at persistent thorny olive bushes. Hopefully in a couple of years we'll have a steady supply of fruit, without much upkeep.

So, plums...

It's odd, I sometimes think, that we call so many different stonefruit plums. A couple dozen, at least.

It's similar with cherries. We call something like a dozen distinct small stonefruits cherries.

I like Japanese plums. I like European Plums. I like Mirabelle Plums. I like American, Chickasaw, Goose, Sloe and Beach plums. I like the hybrids, too.

I think all of them are underrated, but especially the Native North American plums. They're all diverse, but the best of the them rival the best Japanese and European plums.

Plums are a true marvel.