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Wednesday 17 March 2010

of plums

I'm not happy if I haven't planted at least 2 trees during any winter / spring. Most the wood we burn is just prunings or dead or diseased trees, but I feel I need to put back in, what I take out.

I had already planted an apricot early on in the season, which my neighbour really had dug up a bit too early. I'm still not sure if it's going to survive. It still has green bits, but no developed buds to burst into flower yet. Anyway, so yesterday was the day to plant another tree, before it was getting too late.

Meet Stan


No the one on the right is Susan of course, it's Stan the Stanley plum in the left. We have quite a number of plum trees, but most of them are wild plums: a very early variety of small yellow plums, which make kilos of jam for us each year, a slightly larger, egg-shaped yellow variety and a few purple plums, which never seem to be producing much and when they do they go straight from green and hard to rotten. So I wanted a later variety of purple plums. It says about this one that it's particularly well suited for drying. I've been meaning to get more into drying things so I'm hopeful that this little fellow will perform well for us.

And speaking of plums, the early wild variety is now in full flower:

5 comments:

chaiselongue said...

It's a great idea to plant a variety that's good for drying. I haven't tried it, but we eat delicious pruneaux (as they're called here) a lot and they would last for months if you could do it. When we get given plums by neighbours we usually make jam with them, or savoury plum sauce, both good ways of preserving them for winter.

Your apricot tree will recover next year, I expect, even if it doesn't flower this year.

Angela said...

We have plum trees, too, and apples and pears but no apricots. Ours are far from blooming yet, though. Perhaps in April/May. But Italy... wo die Zitronen blüh`n, just can`t be compared.
Don`t work too hard. Cheers from Usedom!

Mr. H. said...

Very good to plant all of those trees, and man with a lot of fruit trees will most likely not go hungry. We were transplanting English walnut trees that we grew from seed just yesterday.

The plums, the little yellow ones that grow wild. I would love to see a picture of them sometime. We have something similar and I am curious if they are the same. Ours come from the rootstock of an old Italian prune tree that we have. They grow so fast and produce so soon that I almost like them them the better than the fruit off the parent tree. They are more green than yellow though. I will post a picture on my blog this fall and you can tell me if you recognize them.

Ayak said...

I love plums. The Turks pick them when they are green and hard and eat them as an accompaniment to Raki. I prefer them ripe.

Talking of planting new trees, we will need to plant a new almond tree at some point. During the gales last week our beautiful almond tree was complete snapped off near the root. It had just started to produce the green almonds. Again, the Turks often pick them at this stage and eat them, so this was the first time I had tried them. They're quite pleasant, but I still prefer them when they are "proper" almonds.

River-Rose said...

Dearest Heiko,

So Funny! I think we can tell which one is Susan!

Apricots are fabulous to grow, just don't plant one in the middle of a lush lawn- it's the pits!