Dessert Organic Fruit And Culinary Plums

Herman (Dual Purpose) A promising very early variety that is ready for picking from mid-July. The medium-sized fruits are of excellent quality and well flavored, blue-black in color with a free stone. Fruits are similar to Czar, but slightly earlier and reputedly better flavored. Trees are compact in habit and moderately productive with resistance to sharka (plum pox virus). Self-fertile. Pollination group B.

Edda (Dual Purpose) A promising Norwegian variety that is ready in late July. Produces large, oval, dark blue-black fruits, with a good dessert flavour and excellent cooking qualities. Trees can be rather slow to crop, but are very hardy. Self-sterile. Pollination group D. Suitable pollinators include: damsons, Blaisdon Red, Denniston's Superb, Jefferson, Jubileum, Victoria, Pershore Yellow, Czar, Kentish Bush, Marjorie's Seedling, Oullin's Gage, Reeves, Utility and Opal.

Opal (Dessert) A relatively new variety, which produces high-quality dessert plums in late July to early August. The medium to large oval fruits are similar in appearance to Victoria, red-purple in color, with pale-gold, juicy flesh, an excellent sweet gage-like flavor and free stones. Trees are moderately vigorous and upright in habit, becoming heavy and reliable croppers once established and are easy to manage. Slightly resistant to bacterial canker. Very resistant to sharka. Self-fertile. Pollination group C.

Utility (Dessert) A red-purple fruited variety, which produces medium to large oblong plums in early August. The green-yellow flesh is tender, serreet and juicy, with a fair flavor. Trees are moderately vigorous .

Pollination. Proximity to a pollinator can become particularly important in periods of bad weather, when few pollinating insects are active. Although it is perfectly possible to grow only two varieties (or even one if it is a self-fertile cultivar), having a wider range of varieties in the orchard can help to extend the season and minimize the risk of whole- crop failure due to frost, pest or disease damage.

A selection of dessert, culinary and dual-purpose plum varieties is presented below, in rough order of cropping. Where possible, varieties have been selected for their suitability for organic production due to their disease resistance and/or proven reliability in the UK (under conventional systems). Most are widely available from nurseries in the UK and on the Continent. There are several promising Continental varieties listed, although their reliability in the UK (under both conventional and organic conditions) has not been established. Victoria is included as the popular industry standard, although it is a very disease-susceptible variety and is not suitable for sites prone to bacterial canker and silver leaf. For those varieties that are not self-fertile and require pollinators, several suitable pollination partners from the selection below are listed accordingly.