Hman, thanks for the report. When did you put in the Long Johns? My tree was planted in 2005, and still no fruit. I got a handful of Empress this year, but the later pickings were really good. Still nothing from my Ouillins, which Jim Cummins claimed is his favorite of all stone fruits. Your report of late picking has convinced me to delay picking as long as possible when my plums appear next year.

Marc, Oullins is wonderful (often called "best of its season"), but on Myro very slow to come into production IME, unlike Empress which seems born to fruit.

Empress is good, but even fully ripened doesn't quite get to that level I call exquisite in my limited experience with it. I'm putting a bearing age tree in my personal orchard anyway because it does such a good job of setting fruit and because I like its lateness. Valor is not quite as consistent of a bearer here, it seems.

The LJ's I'm writing about are probably 9 years old, but on Myro. What rootstock are yours on?

Hman,

I'd given up on Long John because I heard the flavor was mediocre. Now you have me interested in it again.

From a fruit stand perspective is the flavor still good if picked before it starts shriveling. I'm thinking it'd be hard to interest people when it starts to shrivel.

Also, can you talk a little more about the production issues - as Mark mentioned, precocity, cracking, bac. spot?

This plum sounds exciting. I loved seeing people blown away by really large fruit this summer (when I had it). But it has to taste good too.

marc, surprised, here Oullins grows very fast for a Euro gage type plum.

Harvest, do you get yellow jackets on the LJ. The yellow jackets like sweet and late around here but this season everything was earlier and the y jackets missed it. I'll put LJ on my scion want list now, I avoided it based on earlier reports.

Olpea, the flavor was fine before they began to shrivel, just not top notch, but I really think they'd fly out of the box at a farm stand- they really are the most visually impressive prune plum I've ever seen. You do need to wait for flesh to turn amber like any Euro plum I grow.

Given that Cornell would not release a plum that is a shy or even very late(age wise) cropper I wonder what the story is with this one.

Ace, yellow Jackets weren't particularly hard on LJ but they were and continue to be tough this year. I trap mine out with concentrated apple juice and water 50-50 in a trap to adequately control them. Sometimes I put a 2 traps on a single tree which gets expensive in concentrate.

I'm having to trap them now to protect late apples. At least there are no pecking birds this year- at least at my site.

Thanks,

I planted Valor last year. I think I'll give Long John a try as well.

Hman, checking my records, out of all the trees in my orchard, the LJ is the only one without mention of a rootstock. The tag must have come from Cummins without--I should have asked them for details back then. My Ouillins is on Myro, the Empress is on GF8-1. I plead ignorance when it comes to plum stocks.

One characteristic of my Empress and Long John: they both have a severe tendency to go vertical, even as I prune to outside buds. Makes for a tight form--not as open as I would like. I'm torn between taking out the wood on the inside with fruiting buds (not leaving much) or just letting it go. What's your experience?

I spread branches. I've seen old books where there were illustrations of plum branches pulled well below vertical in a method called festooning- sometimes I use this method to speed bearing. Generally I just spread them a bit above horizontal and remove oversized branches entirely. Maybe you should try festooning the LJ.

By oversized I mean branches more than half the diameter of the trunk where they are attached to the trunk. Proportionately larger diametered scaffolds remain vegetative for a longer period as a general rule. Of course there are times when such branches are all you have to work with.

Cutting to an outside bud is OK for peaches but delays bearing in Euro plums. Much better to cut back to a small branch if cutting is necessary at all. Otherwise you create a vegetative response that delays fruiting.

Never heard of GF-8-1. Myro is vigorous and slow to bear and probably what the Cummins plum came on.

harvestman,
do you sell cuttings for grafting?I live near Rochester ny,
and would like is possible get some plum cuttings from you.Ciao,
Giuseppe

Send me some kind of stamped and addressed envelope that I can put a ziplock with some plum pencils into and you can have them for free.

harvestman,

So what's the verdict? Did Long John fruit the next couple of years?

I got a decent crop last year after a deficient one previous season at site I wrote this about. I suspect that leafhoppers may be a problem affecting productivity. I seem to see a correlation to summer deinvigoration via LHs and a lack of productivity of a couple plum varieties.

In other words, I'm still sorting things out but have not quite given up on this one. It is such a beautiful looking plum. It is a very strange grower and best management of drooping spur wood is also a question in mature trees, but I figure that's mostly a matter of thinning it out- favoring younger, thicker spurs.

Right now it would not be my first choice in a later maturing prune plum but I won't be cutting any down. I think I've finally learned how to graft plums with a good success rate.