It sounds like a great tree. As time goes on, I may add a multi-grafted pluot. Your experience is encouraging.

Those pluots sounds mouthwatering Fruitnut.

The ones I've tasted in the supermarkets are plenty good. I can only imagine what tree ripened ones must be like.

Think there is any chance of getting some of those hybrids past the spring freezes up here?

rc:

Not unless you have some kind of protection. They would bloom with or before the apricots, late Febr early March. Plus they are pretty susceptible to being knocked off in the wind. If you were willing to grow them in pots, move inside during cold spring nights, and provide some wind/hail/rain protection, then you could grow them. Pretty big if!! But some of my best fruit this yr was from potted trees.

The Fruitnut

Fruitnut is right- these new pluots are fabulous. I have a tree of Emerald Drop, but I have tasted Splash & Geopride. Splash is my favorite, but both of the others are excellent as well.

A friend of mine has the multibudded tree, and her Geoprides are dark purple as well. Maybe the DWN photo is misleading?

Brian

Brian:

Good to know that your friends Geo Pride looks like mine. The photo shows a dappled reddish fruit more like Dapple Dandy. They also call it red not purple. Mine is a solid dark purple.

Another detail that might identify the fruit is that my Geo Pride is a freestone. I'm sure Splash is not freestone and, as I recall, Emerald Drop is not freestone either. Of the three, my opinion of Emerald Drop is the less well formed.

Next year I'll have a lot more fruit of all three. Will see what my friends think.

The Fruitnut

Well, thanks for your usual excellent advice, Fruitnut.

I did a little of that with a patio peach last year, but, it wasn't a very good variety.

So, just in case I decide to give it a go, what size pot do you recomend for the pluots?

rc:

My potted trees are 15 gallon. That is about as heavy as I want to move around. Right now I have about 12 trees in pots; apricot, pluot, and nectarine. As I said earlier, I've had some very good fruit off these trees. But I appreciate them mostly as a learning experience. Learning mostly about water effects on fruit quality, or at least that's how I'm thinking right now. Will know more soon as much of this fruit is still on the tree. Pots have also extended my harvest dates for any one variety, mostly later harvest in pots.

The Fruitnut

Guys, how do you think these pluots compare with the choicest asian plums? This year I got some wonderful fruits off of my Flavor Supreme, and will soon be having the same experience with my Flavor King, but they were not as flavorful as my Satsuma and Santa Rosa plums. The Satsumas in particular are outta site when picked at the right point. The main thing I like about the pluots is their texture, firm and meaty and not spraying all over you. They also have very high sugar levels. And, their flavor is extremely good, just not as intense as the plums I have been getting lately.

rcnaylor, all of these are very hard to grow in my climate, but if you like to take big risks then give 'em a go. I expect that many years they will not pollinate properly.

Scott

Scott:

My best Asian plums are Catalina, Laroda, Royal Diamond, and Emerald Beaut. I've tried Santa Rosa and weeping SR, haven't tried Satsuma. Under my conditions and for my taste, none of these rank with Flavor Supreme or several other pluots including Splash and Geo Pride. But I've found that growing conditions have as much effect as cultivar.

rcnaylor lives in the Amarillo area. Spring frost is the primary risk. But pollination, wind, and hail will all take a toll. Without protection he will not get a crop even one yr in five. I've tried Santa Rosa and others there with hardy a taste to show for years of effort. It's 50:50 as to whether the tree will die before you taste one fruit.

The Fruitnut

Oh boy, my mouth is watering! I'm in the Southern end of the Shenandoah Valley, near Lexington, VA. Is this too cold for pluots? When you have a 3-in-1 or 4-in-1, do the varieties pollinate each other so you only need one tree?

My husband asked me this morning what we were actually going to DO with all this fruit if I planted all the trees I wanted. In a good apple year, we're already giving them away by the bag. What do you do with something like pluots, which sound like they have a shorter shelf-life than apples? At the moment, I'm turning purple from all the plums I'm eating. Not complaining though! :)

Virginia in Virginia

Virginia, you are probably going to have a hard time like I have had -- lots of diseases, taking a long time to fruit, and years with little or no fruit set. Probably not worth it overall, but if you like putting time into big risks and have a "never say never" personality like I do, then by all means give it a go.

There is a Spring Satin plumcot bred in Georgia which is much, much better for our climate, but I have not heard as positive taste reviews on it compared to the pluots.

Scott

Scott, I could never, in my wildest dreams, be as 'never say never' as you. I've been to your page and seen your backyard! Maybe the pluots are a bit beyond me at the moment. Perhaps a couple more hardy plums or a peach or two. And maybe I'll check out the Spring Satin plumcot. Then there are the additional apple trees and blueberry bushes I want to get...Ooops, fruit city again!

Thanks for your advice. I'm learning so much through GardenWeb!

Virginia in Virginia

This is the first year my combination tree has bloomed, set fruit. GeoPride is trying to take over the tree, with Emerald Drop holding its own, and Splash down to a twig. I let Geo and ED set fruit, hoping to slow them down, and they would have set heavily, if I had let them, much more heavily than my other pluots. Geo was dark purple for me as well, so drippy it had to be eaten over the sink, sweet, no shelf life, and without a perfume or complexity of flavor some of my other plums had. I just ate my first ripe ED, and it was similar: very sweet, juicy, but lacking a perfume or depth of flavor. ItÂs their first year bearing, so perhaps that could change in years to come. Perhaps IÂm waiting too long to eat them. Beauty, Laroda, Burgandy, and Catalina were better, at least to me.
I must confess IÂm biased. This week Concord grapes are ripe, Diamond Muscat last week, and those flavors were so wonderful, other fruits taste "store bought" in comparison. Guess I like intense flavors. Diamond Muscat had an amazing perfume, strong, almost like something out of a tester bottle. Definitely a keeper.

This is an interesting thread, and it does show how tastes can differ. I really, really, like some of the pluots that I have grown. They're very sweet, and the best have what I would describe as very rich/full flavor profiles. They're mostly like Asian plums, but with distinctive apricot flavor overtones. If I had to chose one descriptor, I might use the term "mouth-filling". And they do tend to have a firm/meaty texture that many might prefer (although "Flavor Queen will ultimately ripen into a skin full of juice). Oh, and some of them will hang/keep on the tree *far* longer than any standard Asian or European plum.

Having said all of that, I think Altadenamara is right on point when bringing up the issue of "perfume". While I wouldn't say that pluots lack complexity of flavor, the ones I have eaten *are* relatively deficient in perfume: many other Asian plums are far more aromatic. Also, they lack the intense sweet flesh/tart skin contrast that a plum like "Santa Rosa" has. So if these characteristics are very important to you, you might well prefer regular Asian plums.

I do love perfumed fruit (muscat grapes are just amazing), and "Weeping Santa Rosa" (a very aromatic plum) is one of the fruits I most look forward to every year. But the pluots are very appealing to me as well: I can just keep eating and eating things like "Dapple Dandy" without getting tired of them.

I wonder whether the Zaigers specifically selected for less aromatic fruits when they developed the pluot line. It is certainly true that most American consumers (accustomed to supermarket produce) are not used to highly aromatic/fragrant fruits -- in fact, my guess is that many might be off-put by such characteristics.

Anyway, the contributors to this discussion clearly do not all have the same palates! It brings to mind the discussions on the "Flavorella" plumcot, where some raved about the fruit's aroma and intense sweet/tart flavor, and others (Fruitnut for one, I seem to recall) said, basically, "hey, it's another sour "Santa Rosa" plum type fruit, what's the big deal?"

By the way, Scott, I did get a few "Spring Satin" plumcots from the grafts I grew using the scionwood you sent me a year or two ago. My verdict: nothing special. They did ripen pretty early, though, perhaps about in the first week of June.

I was thinking of starting another thread, but since Ashok brought it up...
I've got a grafted Dapple Dandy, Flavor Queen and Flavor Supreme, with this being the second year I've gotten fruit, plus our farner's market is crawling with pluots.
I keep waiting for the famous deliciousness to kick in that they rave about, but TO ME, they just taste like plums. I get NO apricot flavor at all in their taste. I'll keep my little tree going as long as it does, but I'm not going to buy any more pluots, too much trouble!
IN CONTRAST, I bought a Spice-Zee necta-plum last week at the farmer's market just to try it, and it was delicious! The flavor kept switching from plum to nectarine, then back again with each bite. I may be adopting one of those trees next year!
Carla in Sac

Sautesmom,

Interesting! I wouldn't say pluots taste strongly like apricots, just that they (the ones I like best, anyway) have apricot overtones that add richness to the flavor. Out of the pluots I have tasted, only "Flavor Grenade" doesn't seem to have this quality at all ... but "F.G." is said to hang on the tree for a very long time (even up until Halloween, if I recall correctly), so it would still be worth growing to me.

But your taste buds are your taste buds, and there's no arguing with that!

I think I've eaten "Spice-Zee" at a Dave Wilson Nursery tasting, but I can't remember being particularly struck by it. Then again, eating one slice of fruit after you've been eating loads and loads of selections (in small-slice form) is not the best way to form an impression!

I also can't detect any apricot in a pluot, in fact I just think of them as plums. Any recent news on the controversy on whether there is really any apricot DNA in pluots? Last I heard there was a negative UC Davis test and a positive Spanish test.

Ashok, I agree there is something in the perfumed spectrum where pluots are not as intense as the best plums. Pluots are nicely aromatic, just not quite as strong as some plums. They are clearly better commercial fruit due to a larger picking window, and firmness for shipping. I should say I still like pluots a great deal, and if they were not so hard to grow out here I would be planting a lot more of them.

Scott

I am sure that fruit flavors vary depending on lots of conditions. My backyard-grown pluots are much better tasting than those from farmers markets or supermarkets. Two people in this thread mentioned how good Catalina plums are, and one mentioned Beauty. My Catalinas are just so-so, far inferior to my Burgundy and Inca plums, and Beauty are just watery, almost inedible fruits (the tree is young, only its second year, so I will give it one more year to produce something decent or it is going to be completely grafted over to something good). In contrast, my Flavor Grenade, Flavor King and Emerald Drop pluots are excellent, and have been from their first year of fruiting. I would not rank any of my 9 plums with the pluots, except for Inca, but maybe I have the perfect climate and soil for pluots.

Brian

Brian:

I agree 100%. Sure our tastes differ, but the fruit of any one variety can and will differ by a great deal. The suppermarket vs homegrown comparison should prove that beyond doubt. I'm continuing to try to optimize the fruit from my greenhouse. I've had some great fruit this yr, but also a lot that is marginal...my friends think it's great but I know better. I eat the best and give away the rest!!

To me pluots are plums. Don't see or taste any of that apricot stuff. Even Flavorella, that is clearly half plum/half apricot, tastes like a plum to me. The tree and fruit is 50:50 by appearance but not by taste.

The Fruitnut

Not to resurrect this thread, but you wouldn't happen to have a photo of this tree at this point would you? (nearly 10 years later)

Update: (Why not resurrect a thread?)
12/28/2017. The GeoPride graft completely took over and is now a small tree,
front right in the picture, with its trunk leaning slightly to the left. You can see it still has dried fruit on it. The two
trees on the left are a Splash and Emerald Drop I planted as individual trees
and are twice the size of the grafted tree. All the other pluots died except
one Flavor Grenade that is barely surviving. All my plum trees except Santa
Rosa, Catalina and Early Golden died. The south side of a warm house is not a
good location with the warming climate.

This is awesome, thanks for posting an update with your experience. I'm in the process of selecting tree varieties so your experience is helpful to me. I was debating whether to buy a multi grafted tree but given your experience of the one vigorous variety over taking the others I think I'll consider a multi planting strategy instead. Also, with the trees you have lost, have you lost these in the winter or summer? I'm assuming summer given your comment about facing South? Thanks again

DH, it’s hard to tell exactly what killed them. The warmer temps meant that predatory bark infections and insects weren’t killed off. I would see the bark break and ooze sap as die back started on the tips of the branches and spread down to the trunk. A Weeping Santa Rosa sent up suckers everywhere, then the SR and suckers all died mysteriously. Was it Armillaria root rot? The section in my picture is a little further from the house and everything is still thriving there. Perhaps I should have watered longer and deeper over the summer. Or would the moist soil set off killing fungus and root infections? It’s easier to just replace the tree than to figure out why, as important as that is to know.

I’ve switched to fig trees that are more drought, fungus and disease tolerant, grow affordably from cuttings, can be cluster planted, pruned to any shape easily, have a wide variety of delicious flavors and just grow and produce better overall over time. Best of all, figs don’t set off my acid reflux the way other fruit does now.

Good context on the pluots.. I'm considering trees now, and i think i may opt for some of the more tried and true varieities like methley and satsuma.. maybe i'll try one pluot for fun.

I agree with the figs.. huge fan as well. I currently have a celeste and an LSU purple fig tree.. i just ordered scionwood from burnt ridge nursery as i plan to graft a couple different varieties onto my LSU purple.

Au Rubrum is a disease resistant plum that is suppose to have good flavor as well. Methley is a mild tasting plum. Some people like it and others do not think it is worth picking. My methley split bad but I think with my rainfall (55 to 60 inches average) all my plums may have problems with splitting.

The fruit I'm enjoying right now is the White Sapote. The apple sized fruit are yellow, very sweet, with a melting vanilla taste and a custard consistancy. The Black Sapote are supposed to be even better. These are almost impossible to buy in most stores.

I tried both types of sapotes when i was in Australia last month.. they're really good. I refrigerated the black sapote and it was like chocolate pudding. Nice and sweet, and good texture. I always though sapote was pretty tropical - what zone are you in?

It's Zone 10. Sapotes thrive here in the Los Angeles area.

I have a Dave Wilson 4 in 1 with Flavor Grenade(my favorite of the 4), Geo Pride, Emerald Drop and Splash. But my very favorite is my Flavor Punch Pluerry Tree. They are amazing. They are suppose to be golf ball size but mine are closer to a hand ball size , twice the size of a golf ball.