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[Ed Fackler <ed.fackler@gmail.com>]

Steve:

    Toka requires pollination from another of Hansens plums like Pipe Stone, Waneta, Superior, etc.

    And I totally agree that it is simply wonderful, but I certainly would not call its flavor "bubble gum-like"....far better, complex yet delicately sweet.

ed....with a Toka tree in him front yard....12' from the front door!!!

On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 8:43 AM, loneroc <loneroc@countryspeed.com> wrote:

My Toka is relatively shy bearing.  I think I have adequate pollination
here, too, since most of my other plums bear to the point of branch sagging
and breaking.  Without massive thinning some of the trees bear utterly
insipid fruit.  One year my Toka bore a half dozen fruit.  They were twice
the size of normal.  Seeing all that tree distilled into a teeny set of
fruit reminded me of those cartoons where they show you a behind the scenes
look at a bowling alley and each pin is turned from a log, painted and set.
No sense in using 'em twice.

Steve H.  SW WI
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt Demmon" <mdemmon@gmail.com>
To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2010 4:26 PM
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] 'Bubblegum' plums?


Oh god. The first time I tasted a Toka plum I thought I'd died and
gone to heaven. Definitely my favorite plum as grown here in se MI,
barring the natives which can have an even better flavor. Or much
worse, depending on the tree. ;)

They are small, but I actually like that better in a plum. I like
plums that are like big cherries you can fit in your mouth in one
bite. The only problem I have with them is that somebody decided they
taste like bubblegum and now I think of that every time I eat one and
it tastes a little bit like that. And it did not before. Can have a
strong cherry flavor.

I don't have one planted yet, but the farmer I buy them from describes
it as shy-bearing compared to his other plums. He grows only japanese
and hybrid plums. I'm curious how it would do if pollinated by a
native plum. I believe it is a hybrid.

-matt
se MI z5

On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 11:04 AM, William C. Garthright
<billg@inebraska.com> wrote:
>
>> 'Bubblegum' is some marketer's idea of a better name than 'Toka', which
>> is the older name of this cultivar. You could ask people their opinions
>> of the flavor of 'Toka' since it's the same thing.
>
>
> My Toka plums, which bore fruit for the first time last year, were
> smaller than the other plums I've got, not much bigger than the wild
> plums around here. (Maybe I should have thinned them.) They didn't look
> as nice as the other plums, either,... but they were easily the
> best-tasting. I was very happy with them.
>
> Luckily, they didn't taste the SLIGHTEST bit like bubblegum, either.
>
> :-)
>
> Bill
> Lincoln, NE (zone 5)
>
> http://garthright.blogspot.com/
>
> --
> The Federal Communications Commission, the Food and Drug Administration
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--
-matt demmon
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