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["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

Elephant Heart suffers from pitch pockets.  It's an inherited physiological disorder.  The flesh grows at uneven rates in certain conditions, creating cracks that fill up with callus and pitch.  Heart shaped varieties are especially prone to it.  Redheart plum has  similar  flavor and  quality to Elephant Heart, but because it's round it almost never gets pitch pockets.
-Lon Rombough
Grapes, writing, consulting, my book, The Grape Grower, at http://www.bunchgrapes.com  Winner of the Garden Writers Association "Best Talent in Writing" award for 2003. 
For all other things grape,   http://www.vitisearch.com
A video about The Grape Grower : http://cookingupastory.com/index.php/2008/04/18/the-grape-grower/
On Aug 14, 2008, at 2:34 PM, Alan Haigh wrote:

Elephant Heart plums are a huge hit with my family.  My wife comes from Ethiopia so she was raised on a lot of low acid tropical fruit- think mangoes. I like E H plums a lot too, but I'm having a bit of a problem with my new tree.  My last tree was in a fairly shadey spot, but this didn't stop the E H from getting extremely sweet, however it suffered fatal cambium injury one year as sometimes happens here with many red-fleshed types besides Methely.  I had already planted another on the south side of my house next to an aluminum Airstream trailer. 
 
I have trained the tree to grow over the trailer to make use of the sun there and to provide the tree with extra reflected light.  The tree has grown very well and started producing fruit its fourth year and has a decent crop again this year.  The question is why do the earlier plums develope hard spots around the seed that makes them less pleasant to eat?  It's a little like stink-bug injury on a pear but the affected flesh is actually light brown.  Some of the plums are deformed with large sunken spots at the location of this hardened tissue.  I never experienced this with my previous tree or with Elephant Heart trees I grew many years ago in Ca.  I'm in Z 6, southeastern NY.  I wonder if I have a defective tree somehow or more probably if the extra light is the issue. _______________________________________________
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