[NAFEX] Plums
Lucky Pittman
lucky.pittman at murraystate.edu
Fri Aug 25 15:30:55 EDT 2006
At 12:06 PM 8/25/2006, you wrote:
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>Deb,
> I havent had very good luck with
> purchased varieties of plums lots of the
> fruits seem to split and rot on the tree here
> in the mountains of NC. What Ive started
> doing is talking to some of the old-time
> farmers around and asking for sprouts of any
> good plums that they have, and/or buying
> local plums from farmers markers and planting
> the seeds. I think local land races might be
> better adapted to local conditions than
> purchased trees, and its sort of in the NAFEX spirit, too.
Same here in KY. I've given up anticipating any
edible fruits from the half-dozen or so European
& Japanese hybrid plums I planted when we first
started our home orchard, 12 years ago.
I've got a number of native P.angustifolia -
Chickasaw plums - that I 'rescued' out of the
cowpasture, and just sort of plunked 'em down in
a spot in the orchard - originally to use as
rootstocks - which I later learned was a mistake,
as they sucker like crazy; but, they're very
reliable with regard to fruit production -
they're not large fruits, but at least they
produce a good crop, almost every year. Yes,
they do get brown rot, but not to the extent that
it hits the cultivated varieties - there's
usually more than I can/will eat out-of-hand, and
even curculio damage rarely amounts to anything
much more than a little spot, with a bit of clear
goo excreted to seal the defect.
Subsequently, I've received scionwood and grafted
several copies of the 'Guthrie' selection of
P.angustifolia from a fellow NAFEXer, and have
collected and grafted selections from local productive Chickasaw plum thickets.
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