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The Garden Plot for February 01, 2008
3:55 PM - 4:00 PM
[Program Website]
Today's Highlight: “Plums and Sweet Cherries”
It’s a good time to start thinking about adding fruit trees to you garden and landscape. Apples and pears are easy for most Montana gardeners, but plums and cherries can be a challenge in colder areas of our state.
Cherries come in two types, sweet and tart. Sweet cherries are more susceptible to winter cold and spring frost injury. Tart cherries are tougher and produce fruit more dependably in our cold climate. Many of the older sweet cherry cultivars are not self-fruitful; they require specific cultivars for pollination. Stella is the exception; it produces fruit even if it is the only cherry in your yard because it does not need to be pollinated by another cultivar.
Stella is my favorite cultivar for the home garden. It has grown very well in our trail plots for 8 years, and produced many baskets of firm, non-cracking, very tasty, red to black cherries for the past three years.
Kristin is a sweet cherry cultivar that was introduced in 1983 from Canada. It seems to be cold hardy and produces medium-large, firm, glossy red cherries.
Sam is an early ripening, large, black sweet cherry. The tree is large and vigorous. It blooms a bit later than most other sweet cherries, so its fruit may survive late spring frosts.
There are many plum cultivars suitable for Western Montana. Some were selected from native wild plums. Several are hybrids that have the good taste of more cold-tender Japanese plum types, and the hardiness of Canadian and American plums. Most plums require a pollinator. That means you need to plant at least two different cultivars of plum in your garden in order to get fruit from either cultivar.
Mount Royal is a round-fruited, very blue prune-plum type. It doesn’t need a pollinator. It is the most reliably fruiting, hardy Italian Prune type. It ripens in early September.
Assiniboine came from a Manitoba wild plum. The tree is very winter hardy and productive; it is a good pollinator for other plum cultivars. Assiniboine bears reliable crops of red, thin- skinned plums, with yellow, juicy tender flesh. It ripens in early September.
Pembina is a very old cultivar developed in South Dakota. The large fruit has a deep red skin with a bluish cast. The flesh is bright yellow and juicy. Pembina is very winter hardy, easy to grow, and productive. It ripens early September.
Perfection was released from the University of Saskatchewan
; it is hardy to Zone two and very early. The fruit is more than one inch wide, dark red, with yellow, very tasty flesh.
Pipestone comes from the University of Minnesota. The fruit is large with a deep red, tough skin. The flesh is sweet, juicy, golden yellow and tasty. The tree is hardy to – 50 F and vigorous.
Tecumseh was released in South Dakota in 1918. The fruit is medium sized and dark red with a bluish cast. The yellow flesh is firm, sweet and juicy. This plum ripens in August and produces a large crop of top quality fruit. The tree is exceptionally hardy, productive, and somewhat resistant to insect and disease.
South Dakota is another South Dakota release. It is a large, bright red plum with yellow, sweet, juicy flesh that ripens in September . It is my favorite tasting plum.
Helen Atthowe's new short program of gardening tips
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