The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Growing => Fruit => Topic started by: Robb on August 21, 2020, 08:51:41 pm
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This may be a fruitless question - and my photos are not great sorry
I have different sortd so f plums growing but not sure what they are, wondered if anyone could tell by the look of them? Photos outside and insides.
That's a pound coin at centre for size
The smaller black one is not nice for eating raw but all other three are. A damson?
The larger black one I've been told is a bullace - but it makes nice eating straight from tree and the Hessayon book seems to suggest they shouldn't be this early in season
The largest one I guess is a gage of some sort
No ideas about the small green one.
I also have another which is not ripe yet, bigger than all these and may be Victoria according to a friend.
I have tried with an app but this always seems to unreliable or uncertain once it gets to Family level
Any guesses very welcome.
Thank you.
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Green one looks like an unripe greengage. Yellow one is probably a golden gage. Dark purple larger one looks like a damson and the small shiny black one I've no idea. There are some black plums such as Czar but mine reverted to its rootstock and now produces inedible small green fruit - I keep it for pollination.
Victorias are soft light red with a hint of yellow, quite large with a bloom, with yellow flesh I think - it's so long since ours fruited that I can't remember!
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Hi thanks for that, I am completely ignorant of these things but attempting to learn more.
The one you suggest is a damson is very eatable and sweet and has been for a couple of weeks now. I have been grazing (I guess more properly browsing) on these since then and are very enjoyable - would this be the case with a damson?
I collected a sloe this morning to be able to compare them. The sloes as you would expect are so tart that you want to spit them out. The middling size fruit is not nice to eat but not as tart as sloe.
I have loads of these come down yesterday in the winds we have east Suffolk and would like to do something with them. My lawnmower sheep like them so at worst might just freeze them in a carrier bag (fruit not sheep) so they have free treats throughout winter.
The last pic is what I thought might be Victoria, not ripe but again lots fell off yesterday in winds. Does it look what you had in mind?
Never realised how had to precisely identify fruit - having similar problem with apples, at least 3 or 4 different ones, but only ones labelled are James Grieve.
I guess knowing what they are is not essential but would liek to know what I can be eating and what cooking - and of course easier to give away to folk if I know something
Robb
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Yes, damsons are scrumptious. They make good jam and chutney if you have the patience to take out the stones first - they float on the top of the jam so scoop them off. You can cut them out of the fruit first but it's tedious and it stains your fingers black! Any damson I plant here tends to do well for a couple of years then gets a disease and we have no more fruit :( Damsons are a deep blue/purple usually, with a soft bloom to the skin.
I've never tasted sloes and I don't drink gin - which are irrelevant as I don't have any here.
Sometimes plums revert or die back to their rootstock which could be what your shiny black fruit is. Sheep love all kinds of plums but make sure they spit out the stones, otherwise they can block a stomach, like acorns do. I suppose you could check their droppings to make sure any which are not spat out pass right through
The last fruit looks to be the wrong shape for a Victoria because of the pointed bottom, but let it ripen and see how it turns out.
I grew up in Norfolk where we had all sorts of tree fruit and a large area of reverted plums - we called them bullaces but they weren't in fact. I really miss the ease with which everything grew back there - now I live in Scotland and every single food crop is a hard slog to grow - except potatoes ;D
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Sometimes plums revert or die back to their rootstock which could be what your shiny black fruit is. Sheep love all kinds of plums but make sure they spit out the stones, otherwise they can block a stomach, like acorns do. I suppose you could check their droppings to make sure any which are not spat out pass right through
The last fruit looks to be the wrong shape for a Victoria because of the pointed bottom, but let it ripen and see how it turns out.
They look too dark too. My Victorias are reddish.
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I found a single, lonesome plum on my Victoria tree, which I was watching carefully each day for it to get ripe :yum: . I was going to post a pic for ID too. Then we had a storm and next morning - no plum :o I searched on the ground where it could have fallen then noticed that Mr F had let two old biddies (of the sheepish kind) graze in the orchard (they have no teeth so do little damage). No need to search further for my plum - I'm quite sure Gentian had had it, old baggage :furious: :hugsheep: :roflanim:
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I found a single, lonesome plum on my Victoria tree, which I was watching carefully each day for it to get ripe :yum: . I was going to post a pic for ID too. Then we had a storm and next morning - no plum :o I searched on the ground where it could have fallen then noticed that Mr F had let two old biddies (of the sheepish kind) graze in the orchard (they have no teeth so do little damage). No need to search further for my plum - I'm quite sure Gentian had had it, old baggage :furious: :hugsheep: :roflanim:
How wrong I was! Today Mr F found a solitary plum stone in the goose water bowl. So one of them nicked my Victoria plum :o Huge apologies to the old biddies :hugsheep: