Santa Rosa Plum
2003: This was a flowering plum tree until a friend suggested that we graft what we want onto it rather than take the entire tree out. So in February he grafted two Santa Rosa plum branches, an apricot, and another kind of plum (we'll find out the variety when it yields fruit). It appears that one Santa Rosa graft and the Apricot graft survived. The others have failed. 6/1/03: The grafts have grown 2 feet, so they are really coming on strong. 6/22/03: The grafts, as well as regular new growth, have added some 4 feet. I suspect that the tree is a very healthy one.

2004: 3/10/04: Last year's grafts began to blossom over a week ago, and now the tree is in full bloom. This year's grafts are doubtful, though not hopeless. 4/11/04: What appeared 3 weeks ago to be leaf curl was in fact an aphid infestation. The grafts have failed, but we will still have a modest fruit crop this year. If not for the ant/aphid infestation we might have had a very nice first crop. 6/5/04: We'll have fewer than 10 fruits this year, but at least we'll have an opportunity to taste and get an idea of what the future may hold. 6/13/04: The plums have a little bit of color now. It's hard to tell when they might be ripe, perhaps two weeks? 7/11/04: I picked the last of our 10-12 fruits just a few days ago. They are sweet-tart, with good flavor.

2005: 2/27/05:It looks like one of the apricot grafts might have survived, but it won't have fruit this year. A friend came by about 3 weeks ago to prune the trees, and we again attempted to graft some more apricots. The buds were showing white blossoms about 3 weeks ago, and now the tree is in full white adornment. We will possibly have plenty of fruit this year, but last night there was a light rain which may have damaged some of the blossoms. Note that the blossoms are 2-3 weeks earlier this year than last. 3/24/05: The aphids began attacking the young leaves about 2 weeks ago, so I'm trying to contain the problem. I don't understand why Santa Rose plums are so susceptible to aphids. One of the apricot grafts has died, another is alive but probably won't make it, while the third is thriving. Maybe we'll get some 'cots next year!! 4/21/05: The leaf curl on this tree isn't leaf curl, but an aphid-like pest infestation. The plum crop should be huge this year. I think I should be thinning the fruits, but I haven't done much. I need to get some more ladybugs to rescue this tree. 6/10/05: The plums are just starting to change color from green to yellow/red. Lots have fallen by themselves, and I have thinned still more. 6/19/05: We had rain again about 4 days ago, and lots of the plums have split open. I'm still hoping for a decent crop, in terms of both quantity and quality. 6/26/05: We have eaten a few fruits, though they are tart enough to set my teeth on edge. With luck we'll have some tree-ripened fruit in about a week, with most of the fruit ripening in the week following. 7/10/05: We're picking fruit much faster than we can eat it. I found that Santa Rosa plums are not good when they are over-ripe. 7/21/05: The plums have been quite good, especially when refrigerated after picking, and then when we slice around the pit. It seems that the flesh nearest the pit is the most tart. I really like the fact that the plums have ripened gradually rather than all at once. 7/31/05: We picked the last of the fruit yesterday. I sure hope that the flavor that we observed this year will prove to be typical. I'm not sure that this is actually Santa Rosa plum, because it ripened later than other trees that I know to be Santa Rosa, and the flavor was so much better. I wonder if this has to do with the rootstock, or the moderately protected location that we have? 9/6/05: Pruned the tree to keep it from getting out of control.

DSCN0625.JPG 2006: 2/26/06: I see a ton of buds now, so perhaps we'll get another good plum season. The apricot grafts are still mostly dormant, though there are a couple of promising blossoms. The apricot branches are still very small, so we may need to pluck the fruit, if it has any. 3/8/06: The first blossom opened on 3/5/06. Many more are on the way. The apricot grafts are budding nicely, but I'm not sure yet if this will be leaves or fruit. 3/28/06: The apricot grafts are vigorously putting forth leaves, but no blossoms this year. 4/13/06: I noticed the leaves curling up about 10 days ago, within days after they even started coming out. I observed some aphids, so I sprayed multiple times with Diazinon, but that seems not to help with the leaf curl. I noticed some of the red leaves had a gray mold along the leaf veins, so the aphids may not be the real problem here. I don't know how to prevent or treat this blight, so I will need to do some research here. 4/29/06: I learned that the leaf curl is termed "non- infectious shothole disease". It's nice that it's non-infectious, but it's genetic, so there's nothing I can do about it, short of pruning out all the Santa Rosa plum branches or replacing the entire tree. Our crop looks to be marginal this year. 5/19/06: We have fewer than a dozen fruits on the tree. Cause of the light crop is unknown. 7/4/06: We have 10 fruits that I can see. They were perfectly green until just the last couple of days, when they began showing a little bit of color. 7/19/06: The birds spoiled a few of the fruits, while mold got two others. We covered 5-6 plums with socks to protect them from the birds. We tasted one bird-damaged plum yesterday that was quite good, and another today that was kind of sour (but also bird- damaged). ). 8/13/06: The fruit that we salvaged was OK to good. I need to prune this tree way back because the branches are growing to the sky.

DSCN0625.JPG 2007: The apricot grafts bloomed on Lunar New Year's Day, but there were only about 15 blossoms. The plum blossoms opened up a week later and are now in full bloom. If even 1/3 of the blossoms become plums this tree will have all its branches broken under the weight. It's very pretty. 3/25/07: We have 7 tiny apricots. Hopefully they'll make it past the pests and into our mouths. The new plum leaves appeared just over a week ago, and almost immediately the plum aphids attacked. I bought some ladybugs to counter the attack, but I think I was late yet again. At least this year I know that next year I should use Neem oil instead of Volck oil. 5/13/07: The apricot (one and only!) is getting large, but is not nearly yellow yet. I covered it to prevent birds from getting at it. The plums are thinning themselves, turning yellowish and falling off. We should still have a decent crop, but it is clear that the aphid damage is substantial both to the fruits and the leaves. 6/9/09: The plums continue to self-thin, but they are getting larger now, about like a ping-pong ball. The lone apricot is all yellow and pink, just beginning to soften, so we'll likely pick it tomorrow. It's as big as a peach! 6/19/07: I picked the apricot about a week ago, and it was quite good. As of a couple days ago the plums are beginning to color. However, many are split. I guess we watered too much or at the wrong time. 7/6/07: The birds have been spoiling the fruit, but the branches have grown so much (branches have added 4-5 feet of new growth in most cases) that I didn't bother to net the tree. I've been picking 1-2 fruits per day for several days, and got 5 of them today. The taste has not lived up to what it was 2 years ago, but neither have we refrigerated any of them. 7/17/07: Several times over the last week we have picked more than a handful of fruit. Some taste rather flat, but others are nearly as good as they were two years ago. We haven't covered the tree with nets to prevent birds from eating the fruit, but that hasn't cost us very much. 7/22/07: We picked the last of the fruit about 3 days ago. Also noted that the plum grafts are not all the same variety. We primarily have a variety that is slightly larger, darker, and much sweeter than the Santa Rosa. The Santa Rosa plums themselves are not particularly good. Now if I can figure out which part of the tree has the Santa Rosa plums and which part has the more desirable ones I can trim back or completely eliminate the Santa Rosa variety so that the apricots can have more room.

2008: 3/13/08: Based on information from this site, California Apricot Council, the apricot graft looks like it could be Helena, Tri-Gem, or Tomcot variety. The apricot began blooming about Feb. 15, and now has a couple of very small 'cots coming on, while most of the blooms are still drying up. Plum blossoms opened over a week ago, and are now in full bloom. 3/14/08: The leaves are coming out rapidly now. I found a couple of aphids. Can't buy any ladybugs yet, so I'm concerned that the aphids will take over like they have in years past. 3/29/08: Last weekend I grafted a pluot onto one of the branches. I think this is a bit late to graft, but the "experts" seem to be unable to agree on just what the best time is. The leaves continue to curl, though apparently not as severely as last year. Next year I'll be sure to try the Malathion just before the blossoms open up. 4/13/08: The apricots are nearly the size of a walnut with husk on, but their surface is bumpy rather than smooth like most fruit at this stage. The plums have set, with some being larger than a pea. The branches on the east part of the tree seem to be affected by the plum aphids to a greater extent than the others, while the branches on the west are the healthiest. Generally, though, the pest attacks young leaves, while the established leaves are less likely to be "curled". The pluot graft is showing signs of life from one bud, while the other two buds look dead. 5/15/08: Birds are taste-testing the apricots already, even though the fruit is weeks from being ripe. Covered the apricots with mini- nets, one to four fruits per net. Also observed some baby ladybugs metamorphosing into adults. The pluot graft has three, yes, three vigorous shoots. It looks, though, like whatever pest curls the plum leaves also curls pluot leaves (but the apricots are left alone). I doubt that there is any "organic" solution to the leaf-curling pest, so next year I will spray with Malathion or some such chemical. The problem here is that the apriocot blooms are open at the precise time that I need to spray the plums for the leaf-rollers. 6/7/08: Most of the plums have dropped, for what reason I am not certain. The pluot graft now has 3 separate shoots each of which is about 3 feet in length. Contrary to my earlier comments, the leaf curl has not affected the pluot leaves to any great extent, and arguably not at all. The apricots are fully peach-sized by now, and certainly have some yellow tone to them, but they are not ripe. Perhaps another 10-14 days? 6/12/08: Four apricots fell off yesterday, and were caught by the nets. Another two fell off today. They're very large, averaging about 0.4 lbs each. The flavor is OK, with the nice tang of an apricot, but not delightfully rich as one might hope to find with home-grown fruit. The colored nets over the fruit made them appear less ripe than they actually were. Here you have an example of leaf curl: PlumTreeLeafCurl2 6/22/08: The plums began getting some color within the last 5 days. We still have some fruit dropping, but in the end I expect we'll have a few dozen plums to eat. The apricot graft gave us 11-12 fruits, most of which were larger than any peaches we'll have this year. We picked the last one on 6/17, and the total weight of our harvest this year was probably nearly 5 lbs. The pluot graft now has 3 branches that have grown about 5 feet in slightly under 3 months. I need to cut one of those branches, for the sake of the other two. 7/5/08: Picked the first ripe plum on 7/2. Covered some of the fruits with nets. Trimmed about 5 inches off the tips of the pluot shoots. They're still 5 feet long. Many of the plums are split, possibly due to overwatering. I susupect that the order of the day is to give one bucket per week starting in early June. 7/21/08: We have only a few plums left on the tree, after picking about 3 lbs over the last few days. It seems that we can't afford to wait until the plums are dark purple and soft in order to pick them, because by then the flavor has deteriorated. We need to pick them while they are still firm. At that time they do in fact taste better than any Santa Rosa plums that I have tasted. Except for a few small ones, mostly from the west side of the tree, that seem not to taste good no matter when we pick them. So, the mystery of how many types of plum we have is settled: 1 and 1 only. But is it really a Santa Rosa? That has yet to be resolved. 8/4/08: Based on some research, this may be a Red Beauty plum, because the flesh is red instead of amber, like a Santa Rosa.

2009: 2/20/09: The first apricot blossoms opened during the first week of February. Since then we've had plenty of rain, so I don't think we'll get anything out of those blossoms. The plum blossoms are swelling, so that's good to see. The pluot has a very few buds, so there's a chance we'll see some fruit off of it this year. 3/1/09: Castlebrite apricot is well into bloom, pluot has more buds than expected, and is in bloom, plum has begun to open nicely. Unfortunately, the weather has been wet, so the opportunity to spray for the plum tree aphids has been lost. 3/26/09: I deposited some ladybugs on the tree 3 days ago. They found food immediately, so I think that I bought the ladybugs none too soon. Apricots are malformed, possibly as a result of the late use of lime sulfur, or possibly a result of a late cold spell. Plum tree leaves are holding up well, showing none of the early curl that I observed in previous years. I hope this condition holds. I wonder if this is a result of the anti-fungal spray that we used in December-February? So the bottom line is that I still don't know whether the leaf curl was caused by plum tree aphids, or by a pathogen. I inspected the leaves several days ago (before application of ladybugs) and found some whiteflies and other bugs at the base of the leaves. The pluot graft will have fruit this year, and the branches are growing nicely. 4/23/09: Leaf curl and shothole disease have been very limited this year, presumably due to the spraying. So it seems that plum tree aphids were not the problem at all. It was indeed an infection. The apricot graft will have only 2 or 3 fruits this year, and the pluot will apparently have 3. The plum harvest will depend on how much droppage we get, as I see lots of small fruits now forming. 5/7/09: The plums are coming nicely, we have 3 pluots and 3 apricots. The shothole disease and leaf curl have been controlled by application of malathion and Daconil. Not exactly an organic grower's ideal, but it worked. So the problem appears to have been a pathogen, not a pest, after all. 5/23/09: Fruit drop began about 10 days ago, but has been minimal so far. 6/11/09: Fruit drop accelerated beginning about 10 days ago. One of the (3!) apricots is nearly ripe. 6/14/09: The first apricot fell today (caught by a net, thank goodness). Some of the plums have acquired some color, though it is not clear if this is because they are actually beginning to ripen or just that it is premature coloration. 6/26/09: Picked a ripe plum today, though it had minor pest damage. Taste was poor. Other plums are coming along well, gaining a slight blush in many cases. The pluots are still very green, but larger than I expect any of the plums to get. 6/27/09: The last of the three apricots fell (into the net, of course) today. I ceased watering this tree about a week ago, as every time I watered I observed heavy fruit drop. I also saw very minor splitting, which I don't wish to encourage. 7/29/09: I discovered much to my surprise that my Santa Rosa Plum tree isn't a Santa Rosa Plum tree. The fruit is purple with green mottling on it, the flesh is dark red, and the flesh clings to the seed. It's a Methley Plum. 7/30/09: Picked the last of the plums today, and the first of the pluots (it fell into the net). We collected over 20 lbs. of fruit, with the majority coming on about 7/20. 8/8/09: Picked the last (of 3!) pluots (plumcots) on 8/6/09. It's the size of a peach. Here's a good description of plum types

2010: 1/14/10: We pruned this tree in late December, and recently sprayed with copper sulfate to prevent leaf curl and with Volck Oil to kill over-wintering insects. I expect to spray with Malathion/Daconil, or with Neem oil, several times during the next 2-3 months. Copper sulfate and Volck oil will be applied again in early February. 6/12/10: I sprayed with Neem oil, which worked out fairly well. However, I observed a small amount of shothole disease. We had 12 huge apricots, but one fell prematurely due to mold around the stem. Another fell yesterday, and the nets captured three more today. We'll taste-test them tomorrow. The pluot has grown wildly, and has a fair amount of fruit at an early stage, while the plums mostly fell at the pinhead-size stage, apparently due to our late March frost.

2011: 3/14/11: The big apricots began blooming on about Feb. 6, and even yesterday had a few blossoms open. The pluot was opening up by about Feb 13, and reached full bloom around Feb. 28. The plum began blooming around Feb 20, and is currently just past full bloom. 5/22/11: We have about 14 of the XL apricots, though I was only able to reach 10 of them today to cover them with nets. The others are too high to reach, either by climbing or by ladder. The pluots are so heavy that they may break branches. Already one small plum branch broke under the weight of the fruit it was bearing. Plums: 7/15/11: 6.0 lbs. 7/17/11: 6.5 lbs. 7/19/11: 10.25 lbs. 7/22/11: 29.75 lbs. 7/24/11: 4.0 lbs. 7/26/11: 3.0 lbs. Total: 59.5 lbs. Pluot: 8/4/11: 13.0 lbs. 8/7/11: 12.0 lbs. 8/9/11: 12.0 lbs. Total: 37.0 lbs.

2012: 2/7/12: As of 1/28/12 the pluots began blossoming. I sprayed all trees with 3-in-1 fungicide on 1/21/12. As of today, the Giganticots buds are ready to open. 2/24/12: The Methley plum blossoms first opened on 2/22/12. Giganticots have been open for over a week. 5/19/12: The plums are more numerous than ever before. I fear we'll be breaking branches under the weight of all this fruit. Pluots are in good shape, with the tree growing quite a bit. Giganticots are about 3x more numerous than at any time in the past, though I don't know how I can keep the pests away. Right now the 'cots are slightly larger than Blenheim cots at maturity, and they have a month to grow. Plums are as large as large cherries. Pluots are approaching ping-pong ball size. 6/1/12: Counted 98 giganticots on the tree. If we can collect only half of those we'll be in good shape. Some are beginning to yellow now, so I should cover the tree with a net if I can. Apparently due to the Neem oil application I see very little pest or disease damage so far. The plums have been thinning themselves, but still have loads of branch-breaking fruit. Hard to believe that two years ago we had ripe giganticots by June 12 or so. 6/7/12: We have over 90 giganticots on the tree, most of which were recently covered with small single-fruit nets. The plums are thinning heavily right now, but we should still get a great crop if nothing else goes wrong. Tree is generally free of pest and disease, though some of the highest young branches appear to have aphids or something similar.