Anyone working with plums? Probably setting myself up for public embarrassment here by posting before harvest but I’ve counted 9 species of plums or plum hybrids. I think I’m a month behind but hopefully I can get these in the ground April 1.
10 Likes
I’ve planted a lot of plum seed the last couple years, but mostly just different native species. I can’t remember if I included any improved varieties.
With them being from Oikos I bet you’ll be fine, planting a little late might prevent premature germination/growth.
2 Likes
How I love plums. I’m growing out an extremely large quantity and diversity of beach plums, which are native to the nearby coast. The flavor of beach plums is particularly enchanting to me: sweet and high in tannins, but lacking tartness. By comparison I find most domestic plums to be more tart and more boring. But I don’t know anyone else as obsessed with the beach plum as I am.
Plum seeds need stratification to germinate, no? Are you doing them in the refrigerator?
Supposedly they respond best to a long stratification period, but that probably varies between plum species and varieties. And I haven’t put mine into a moist medium yet either-- I was gonna plant them directly in the ground, but the ground froze about a week ago and doesn’t seem like it will thaw any time soon. Guess I should start them in the fridge.
4 Likes
Sounds like you’d be a great collaborator in this beach plum improvement project:
https://www.experimentalfarmnetwork.org/group/19
Possibly the organizer is as obsessed with beach plums as you are? 
2 Likes
Can’t say i’m working with (landracing) them, although i have quite a lot of Green Gauge. Because they sucker easily. Much more than my Mirabel an elderly man trusted me with.
They’re not really quick at getting ready to fruit though. Some 5 years or so.
I would like to see that reversed, if i were to work with Plums. So early fruiting and later suckering.
Early fruiting is also good to make early crosses, i learned from this man who did a lot of work on trees/landscaping and buying and selling terrains all over USA, who did a podcast promoted here not long ago.
3 Likes
Early fruiting is a very nice trait!
I love that my neighbor’s apricot tree flowers in late March – before the last few hard frosts most years – and the flowers sail through without problems, and turn into big juicy sweet delicious fruits that are ripe around mid-May. Freestone, too! I have no idea what the variety is, but it’s everything one could want out of a stonefruit tree.
(Yes, for anyone in the US who is now clamoring for a tree just like that, I did put several dozen of its pits in the Serendipity Seed Swap box. 
)
3 Likes
I have native sand plums/Chickasaw plums, P. angustifolia, and I’ve considered getting a couple other native plums to add to the thicket and allow them to naturally hybridize. If I had more space than a suburban lot, I’d probably go absolutely wild with all the plums and see how crazy I could get with hybrids. Instead, I have to be more picky about it. That’s a task for next year, though. This year I need to restore my thicket after having to take out many of the oldest “parent” plants… we had fiber optic cable run through our neighborhood and the digging and trenching took out more of the center of my thicket than I realized. 
2 Likes
So you’re saying you would go plum crazy? 
1 Like
I was trying to avoid a pun that easy, but… yes. 
1 Like
Hey Rylan,
I am indeed working with plums. And, if you have Oikos like I see you do there, you are on the right path. Ken has a vast vast vast Prunus (plum specific) array of genetics. He is quick to point out: Prunus often have double dormancies. SO, they can be tricky in that regard. Even if you give them that staple 120 day cold stratification they may need a warm and back to cold and back to warm again to break dormancy. It can be a real pain in the petoot - in the very least, it can take longer and require even more patience than you’d intended. I feel like I get new plum seeds from Ken every year. As far as I know, he is one of the only nurserymen in the continental US really pushing those fringe plum species into actual cultivation. I have a ‘Blue Sloe Plum’ from him that is far and away my best candidate for surviving the absurd winters here. Additionally, I’ve found fairly good success with his ‘Nana’ Beach plums. Over the last two seasons, I’ve planted out a corridor of 50 some plums of varying species on a forest edge. Best of luck!
1 Like
Doesn’t he only do bulk seed quantities now?
Well, ostensibly if you go strictly by his website yes. Ken is extremely willing to work with you, though, if he resonates with what you are doing and/or what your intentions are. We have a kinship in horticultural philosophy and I also reciprocally send him things from time-to-time. For example, when I first moved to my farm in 2020 I sent him a personal letter on how devastated I was he was closing his nursery. I had finally gotten ‘my farm’ (intentional quotes - I am in service to the land and this mountain valley I certainly don’t possess anything in my heart of hearts) and, voila, one of my seed heroes was retiring. So, he worked with me. He sent me a massive perennial seed kit for free. He paid the shipping too. It was an incredible gesture. Naturally, me being a complete noob in the unforgiving nature of this particular growing zone, I killed the entire kit of diverse Juglan spp.. I was legitimately crushed. I had crosses upon crosses he had given me. Thankfully, the hazels made it and I still have early pioneers in the ground here. I digress.
Recognizing this immense generosity, I began getting to know him more and more. I now pretty much send him a personal check for $1,000-to-$1,500 one time annually to both honor what he has done for the past forty years and a general invitation to receive some of his genetics. His Asimina triloba pool of genetics, for example, are the best pawpaw seeds I have ever worked with. I continue to push the boundary of those old Corwin Davis genetics and currently have 23 year 3 trees in the ground that have made it through five days of ridiculously intense -25-to- - 40 F and then a month of 5 F - to - -15 F the following year. Both IN ground and IN pots. Conventional thinking would tell you this isn’t even possible let alone worth trying.
SO, though he focuses on bulk lots, he is amenable to work with you if you aren’t wasting his time. He remains one of my favorite people in the entire seed world.
3 Likes
That is great to hear.
I ordered a lot of stuff from him in the past and was also very disappointed when I found out he was changing to bulk orders.
I am in a similar situation. I have land and future plans for a food forest but I am not in a good situation to be able to begin the majority of the work yet.
I will have to talk with him when I have that ready. I probably I still have an old ‘wishlist’ of seeds from the old website.
Never hurts to ask! It all depends year-to-year on his schedule and his harvests. Where you are I highly recommend his American persimmon and Northern pawpaw genetics. You’d likely find great success. Additionally, beyond the prunus, his work with edible oaks is second to none. You’d likely find very good luck there if he has a good harvest year. He sent me Q. aliena/acutissima/texana and his ‘Nutty Burr’ oak genetics last season. I had very good germination. I planted out a good 23 or so trees and have yet to see if they made it up my way through winter 1. It does appear a great number of them made it in my tree pot and planting mix (mulched) in my GH.
1 Like
I still get his newsletter emails and have been really interested in his oak selections since reading about them.
1 Like
That must be why my plums didn’t germinate yet but the peaches did. If I get them warm how long do you think they should stay warm? And then how long back in the cold? I’ve got like 1000 of these things hopefully I don’t kill.
This is not going to sound super helpful but it really all depends. I start with a baseline of: soak the seeds at minimum 24 hours no more than 48 hours. I then cold stratify for a baseline of 120 days. I bring them out to room temperature for 1-2 weeks - maybe three weeks if the air feels right (ie the room temp isn’t too cold). If nothing has happened, I try two weeks back in the fridge and then try to coax them back to germinating. When all seems lost I either leave them at room temp in their peat bags for the season and throw them back in the fridge for four months or simply pot them up. Mulch them. And throw them outside for the season and through a winter. AND, I also acknowledge that some times the plums won’t give me what I’d like. Notoriously, common beach plums (for example) are ridiculously fickle to germinate. Some years I have epically good germination in the plum seeds I get. Other years it is very sparse. It’s definitely a love and learn to let go relationship.
1 Like
And if that still doesn’t work, after the final step, just say “I give up!” and dump them in the compost pile.
That usually does the trick!
1 Like
Thanks. I might just need to stratify them longer so I’ll give them another 3 weeks to a month. I got a later start on stratifying them than I was hoping for, I think they’ve been in the fridge about 2 and a half months.
Yeah, keep trying. Season-to-season my stratification schedule goes all over the map. I feel like I never don’t have several things in my fridges. So much so, my wife recently grabbed an old fridge from CL to ensure I got my seeds out of our back-up fridge in the main garage. I’ve had great years with plums. I’ve had atrocious years with plums. I accept it’s literally a 50/50 proposition either time. It’s almost like I’m hatching shipped chicken eggs!
1 Like