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  • From: "William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>
  • To: NAFEX List <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Pluots in Nebraska
  • Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:42:36 -0500

This is the result this year of my experiment with three pluot trees (the first year I've had fruit) in Nebraska. It's pretty long, so now is the time to hit that delete key, if you're not interested. :-)

I planted three pluots (semi-dwarf, on Citation rootstock) in the spring of 2007: Flavor Grenade, Dapple Dandy, and Flavor Supreme. I bought them online from Adams Co. Nursery, and they arrived bare root and dormant, good-sized little trees but with no branches. I'd never heard of anyone growing pluots around here, and most of the people I know had never even heard of pluots before. But I thought I'd give it a try.

They grew strongly - very strongly. It's been hard keeping them as small as I'd wanted. They haven't had any problem at all with Nebraska's climate (I'm in zone 5). They bloomed a bit one year after planting, but didn't set on any fruit to speak of - and nothing that got past the squirrels. (This year, I put an electric wire around them, which did pretty well to keep the squirrels away.)

This year, the Flavor Grenade was the first to bloom, starting on April 4th, just in time for a cold snap. The temperature dropped to 23° F. at the airport a couple of miles away (might have been a bit warmer in my yard). That killed all of the blossoms and buds on my apricot trees, but it didn't seem to have any effect on my blooming Japanese-American plums or on this pluot. But it might have had some effect on the other two pluots. At least, they didn't start blooming until 11 days later, and they didn't have a whole lot of blossoms even then.

The Flavor Grenade ended up setting on a ton of fruit. I mean, it was just solid with fruit. I thinned them a little bit, but not much (not enough, I suspect), and the tree dropped some fruit in July. But there was still a LOT of fruit on it, and they were quite large, too. The other two, which bloomed late, set on much less fruit. The Flavor Supreme set on only three fruit (and I knocked one of them off the tree while mowing the lawn). The Dapple Dandy set on maybe two dozen or so pluots. I had some fruit drop with that one, too, and birds destroyed some, so I didn't get an accurate count.

OK, as far as ripening goes, the Flavor Supreme took me by surprise. Remember, this was one of the late blooming pluots, and the tree with only two fruit on it. On July 15th, I was walking past and noticed that one of the fruits was dead ripe. It had split at the bottom, and I don't think it would have lasted another day. But it was incredibly delicious - one of the best fruits I've ever eaten. It was red-fleshed, sweet, but not too sweet, and fruity (grocery store pluots I'd eaten were sweet, but didn't have much fruit taste). This one really tasted like a fruit - like a sweet plum, but better.

I picked the other pluot on the tree five days later. It didn't seem to be quite ripe, but the birds had been pecking holes in it, and it was raining, so I didn't think it would last any longer. It was good - sweet - but it didn't have the really great taste of the first one. I just didn't think it was completely ripe (but after my experiences with the other two varieties, I've got to wonder).

The other two pluot varieties seemed like they'd never get ripe. They looked "almost ripe" for a month or more. (Note that we had an unusually cool July and August this year.) I still don't know when I should have picked them. I netted the Flavor Grenade when the birds started pecking them, but I didn't think there were enough pluots on the Dapple Dandy to bother (there were actually more than I thought).

The birds still got inside the netting pretty regularly, and they poked holes in a lot of the pluots. And I started losing more and more of them to rot (black rot, I think). With the pluots, I didn't have any insect problems at all, but the rot just got worse and worse. I was picking them up off the ground all the time (cutting the rot off and trying to eat the good bits). They were always sweet, right from the start, but they just didn't seem... ripe.

Anyway, I finally picked them all in early to mid-September. I was just losing too many of them. By then, I was down to maybe three of the Dapple Dandy. All the rest had rotted (although I'd eaten parts of several of them). This pluot is another red-fleshed variety, but I'm not sure I ever ate one that was appropriately ripe. They didn't seem ripe, anyway. They weren't as sweet as the others, but they were sweet enough to eat. But they seemed green. They weren't completely red inside, they were hard, and they just didn't SEEM ripe.

I ate the last one today, after it had been in the refrigerator awhile (and then back out on the counter for a couple of days). This one seemed to be somewhat over-ripe. It was slightly soft, and all scarlet inside. But it wasn't especially sweet (I noticed with the next variety that it, too, loses sweetness when it gets too ripe). I just don't know. I was eating these things for a month, but I couldn't seem to catch them at the right stage of ripeness.

The last variety (the first to bloom), the Flavor Grenade, is a yellow-fleshed pluot. It seems very much like a large, very sweet plum. As I say, the tree was just loaded with fruit, and they were all big and looked great. But they sat for a month without seeming to get any riper. And then I started losing more and more of them to rot. I was sampling them all that time, and they were very sweet - very, VERY sweet - but not much else. Again, they didn't SEEM ripe.

After I picked them, I gave most of them away, and people told me they really liked them. To me, they seemed to be extremely sweet, but with little "fruit" flavor. Admittedly, I'd eaten so much fruit by then that I was getting really tired of... pretty much everything. Maybe that was my problem with them. I kept thinking that they needed to ripen more, but when I let them sit until they got just slightly soft, they were too ripe. At that point, they actually lost their sweetness (except for one individual pluot that got soft and then became so sweet that it was like eating pure sugar). They weren't terrible, but I just didn't like them much. Still, as I say, when I gave them away, people raved about them (and usually, when I give away fruit, I never hear a word back).

In summary, the Flavor Supreme ripened very early (perfect timing, because none of my peaches or plums were ripe by then) and at least one of them was possibly the best fruit I've ever had. But I only got two of them from the whole tree.

The Flavor Grenade ripened much, much later (like two months after the Flavor Supreme), and it was just loaded with fruit. Really, it was remarkable how much fruit - large, beautiful pluots - were on that one tree. Plus, cold temperatures didn't seem to bother the blossoms at all. But I didn't much like the taste of them. They were very, very sweet, but... not much else. (Other people did like them, though.)

The Dapple Dandy ripened very late, like the Flavor Grenade, but it didn't set on much fruit. I thought I would like this red-fleshed variety better than the yellow-fleshed one, but I didn't actually eat one that was especially good. It wasn't as sweet as the others. Of course, I didn't have very many of them, not at all. It seemed like this variety was the most susceptible to black rot.

Sorry about the length of this, but I thought the details might help if someone else was trying to decide about these pluots. This is my first year with fruit, so I can't say how much the weather affected things. I guess I'll see what happens next year.

Bill
Lincoln, NE (zone 5)

PS. I'd be interested in comments about the taste of these three varieties, if you're familiar with them. I still don't know what to think.

--
Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. - President John F. Kennedy





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