Comments from the Heritage and Rare Fruit Network
Ben Waite
Does anyone have a really nice selection of cherry plum? There were loads of seedlings around as a kid and they varied from delicious to pretty rubbish from memory.
17 October at 12:57 ·
Carolyn Payne-Gemmell I had a really nice one growing in Warrnambool, I could get you some scion next winter, it was a grafted cultivar and came from a nursery, it was just called 'cherry plum' it is incredibly prolific, I can put up a photo if you like.
17 October at 13:40
Ben Waite
Thanks Carolyn. I will try and remember to ask you then On a related note, just west of Colac there is a big patch of feral plums, a mix of red and yellow ones. I've always wondered whether they were large cherry plums, mirabelles or maybe chickasaw plums. Or maybe just escaped seedlings from an orchard Has anyone ever pulled over and tasted them?
17 October at 13:49 ·
Carolyn Payne-Gemmell
I know those patches on the hwy near Colac Ben, there was a large red and yellow one that seemed to be a Japanese plum, and there is a couple of clumps of large oval prune type english plums, I use to wild harvest there when I live in Warrnambool. I have a few friends still there so will have to get them to document them this season and we can do a rescue of some scion next winter.
17 October at 13:54 ·
Ben Waite
Wow. Quite a mix. I'll have to hit you up for some of those too
17 October at 14:04 · Like
Cecilia Dart-Thornton
I sent some cherry plum scion to a nurseryman in NSW a few years ago. What an underrated fruit it is! There are several cherry plum side-of-the-road 'orchards' around Victoria, bearing fruit of varying degrees of flavour and glorious colours, from pale gold through orange and red to dark crimson. Tough, beautiful trees, diseases resistant, prolific bearers...
18 October
Cecilia Dart-Thornton
Carolyn Payne-Gemmell and Ben Waite, in regards to roadside fruit trees my method in the past was to try and remember where the good fruiters were growing (when I tasted them in autumn), and then return to cut scion in winter. This worked badly for me because it's so hard to pinpoint the exact tree that had the good fruit, when they are all leafless. And I didn't want to mark the tree with fluoro spray, or anything like that, lest it drew the trees to the council's attention (and thus the probable attention of bulldozers). So now I'm going to try budding and/or greengrafting, in autumn, as soon as I've spotted the flavoursome fruits.
18 October
Neil Barraclough
Green graft when you find the fruit, or bud.
18 October
Neville Burley
There were some really nice cherry plums out where my sister in law share farmed, I'd love to get access to them again especially the yellow cherry ones they were the nicest, bring on the Slivovitz I say.
Ben Waite
Does anyone have a really nice selection of cherry plum? There were loads of seedlings around as a kid and they varied from delicious to pretty rubbish from memory.
17 October at 12:57 ·
Carolyn Payne-Gemmell I had a really nice one growing in Warrnambool, I could get you some scion next winter, it was a grafted cultivar and came from a nursery, it was just called 'cherry plum' it is incredibly prolific, I can put up a photo if you like.
17 October at 13:40
Ben Waite
Thanks Carolyn. I will try and remember to ask you then On a related note, just west of Colac there is a big patch of feral plums, a mix of red and yellow ones. I've always wondered whether they were large cherry plums, mirabelles or maybe chickasaw plums. Or maybe just escaped seedlings from an orchard Has anyone ever pulled over and tasted them?
17 October at 13:49 ·
Carolyn Payne-Gemmell
I know those patches on the hwy near Colac Ben, there was a large red and yellow one that seemed to be a Japanese plum, and there is a couple of clumps of large oval prune type english plums, I use to wild harvest there when I live in Warrnambool. I have a few friends still there so will have to get them to document them this season and we can do a rescue of some scion next winter.
17 October at 13:54 ·
Ben Waite
Wow. Quite a mix. I'll have to hit you up for some of those too
17 October at 14:04 · Like
Cecilia Dart-Thornton
I sent some cherry plum scion to a nurseryman in NSW a few years ago. What an underrated fruit it is! There are several cherry plum side-of-the-road 'orchards' around Victoria, bearing fruit of varying degrees of flavour and glorious colours, from pale gold through orange and red to dark crimson. Tough, beautiful trees, diseases resistant, prolific bearers...
18 October
Cecilia Dart-Thornton
Carolyn Payne-Gemmell and Ben Waite, in regards to roadside fruit trees my method in the past was to try and remember where the good fruiters were growing (when I tasted them in autumn), and then return to cut scion in winter. This worked badly for me because it's so hard to pinpoint the exact tree that had the good fruit, when they are all leafless. And I didn't want to mark the tree with fluoro spray, or anything like that, lest it drew the trees to the council's attention (and thus the probable attention of bulldozers). So now I'm going to try budding and/or greengrafting, in autumn, as soon as I've spotted the flavoursome fruits.
18 October
Neil Barraclough
Green graft when you find the fruit, or bud.
18 October
Neville Burley
There were some really nice cherry plums out where my sister in law share farmed, I'd love to get access to them again especially the yellow cherry ones they were the nicest, bring on the Slivovitz I say.