Flavor Supreme has lots of sweetness, similar in this way to a typical European plum, but with sprightliness and complex flavor characteristic of an Asian plum. It has a little apricot in its background, along with Santa Rosa and Mariposa plums, which are common in the parent lines of new varieties of plums and Pluots. It tastes best when it first starts to soften, while the skin is still mostly green. It has a bit of crispness at this point. Eventually, the flesh will turn a deep maroon, but by then much of the complex flavor will be gone. My experience this year has been that the fruit can develop a slightly "cooked" or oxidized flavor if it ripens when the temperature gets to 107 degrees. Fruits which ripened after the high heat (daytime highs of about 92 to 99 degrees) were far better. The same was true for the plums below.
Flavor Supreme grows on a vigorous tree with big leaves, but its blossoms are not very attractive to bees. It's a good idea to graft in some early-blooming pollenizers, like the old California commercial plum, Inca, or one of the other early-blooming Pluots. Or, you can plant your pollenizers very close to the Flavor Supreme, or bring over some vases full of blooming branches to place in the tree. Right now, the tree is afflicted with spider mites, and as soon as all the fruit are picked, it's going to be pruned and blasted with a jet of water in the mornings. I've already started spraying the tree with water, trying to avoid the fruit as much as possible.
This year, the fruit is ripening with Santa Rosa, indicating that rain prevented setting of the earliest blooms. As with our apricots. Normally, Flavor Supreme starts to ripen well before Santa Rosa.
Santa Rosa is the classic California Asian plum, introduced by the legendary breeder Luther Burbank. It is tart at the pit and astringent under the skin, with a sweet layer in between which has a lushly complex flavor. It tastes a bit "wild". It is not sweet or firm enough for some modern tastes, but this is a fruit that lets you know you're alive when you eat it. A Santa Rosa at its peak is, in my opinion, a wonderful thing. Some people peel it before eating. Like Flavor Supreme, it loses flavor if over-ripe. It makes very flavorful jams and jellies. Leave the skins on.
The blossoms are self-pollenizing, and this tree is the classic pollenizer for Asian plums and Pluots which need cross-pollination. It has a wide climate adaptability. The tree is vigorous and easy to care for. Perhaps too vigorous for some people. Summer pruning is key to controlling its size. If compatible with your soil, you could also consider planting it on a dwarfing rootstock (the same is true of Flavor Supreme, another vigorous tree).
Weeping Santa Rosa is a Floyd Zaiger development, like Flavor Supreme Pluot. It's one of his earlier releases, now off patent. The fruits grow on a tree with a weeping habit. It is a little sweeter that Santa Rosa (wins taste tests) and ripens slightly later than Santa Rosa. It can be picked when a little firmer and still have great flavor.
Below is our plate of fruit under the Weeping Santa Rosa tree by our front walk. You can see a couple of fruits hanging from the tree next to the daylily blossom. The cut fruit in the photo above is slightly under-ripe. At perfection, the flesh will have a slight rosy blush, a little less than the photo of the Santa Rosa fruit on the left.
Like Santa Rosa, its blossoms are self-pollenizing and can pollenize other varieties. The tree is often grafted onto dwarfing rootstock for ornamental use, but you can also prune it to the shape you like. It has a wider climate adaptability than Flavor Supreme, but probably not as wide as Santa Rosa. The little flower underneath is a cross between a Martha Washington geranium (well, pelargonium) and a scented species. It survives in our climate better than the true Martha Washington types. But the bloom you see lost a petal during the photo session, and it may be our last for the year.
No comments:
Post a Comment