North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Nikolai <Nikolai@v-wave.com>]

Here in prairie Canada plums are often a big disappointment.  They are often
fully hardy, with year after year of heavy blossom.  The only problem is
very little if any fruit sets.  The pollination seems very poor, even when
different varieties overlap in flower, and the weather is warm with a lot of
bees.  What some have found is that the wild plum (either Prunus Nigra or
Americana, I can't remember, but its the one that grows wild in southern
Manitoba) DRAMATICALLY improves pollination and results in heavy fruit set.
Apparently plums trees that produced heavily, and the owner THOUGHT were
being pollinated by another edible plum, were actually being pollinated by a
wild plum blossoming in the same general area.  While I personally haven't
tried it, the University of Saskatchewan has had excellent success with plum
set, but only when wild plum blossoms were present.  Apparently hardy
prairie plums, ie Brook Red, Brook Gold, Prairie, Opata, Pembina, etc, are
very poor in pollinating other edible plums, even when they flower at the
same time. So its certainly worth a try grafting on a few branches of a wild
plum if a person is having lots of plum blossoms, but no plums.
Bernie Nikolai
Edmonton, Alberta




At 11:11 PM 5/24/00 -0400, you wrote:
>A 22:17 00.05.23 -0500, vous avez écrit :
>>Kevin wrote:
>>
>>someone in another group says that nanking cherry will pollinate 
>>plums. Is this true?
>>
>
>I have also read that it could cross pollinate with early flowering plums
>in the catalog of Sprout Farm, a nursery in Western Canada. I have not
>controlled this statement however.
>Claude Jolicoeur, Quebec.
>
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