Plant of the week: Late plums

Delicious varieties to keep you in succulent fruit into autumn

othing beats picking a ripe, juicy, sun-warmed plum straight from the tree. The rich flavour and melt-in-the-mouth flesh is a joy. The range sold in shops is limited as they’re easily damaged so it’s best to grow your own.

While the main plum season runs from late July and peaks in August, and extends into September and October, the varieties profiled here are mostly self-fertile, so don’t need a pollinating partner. If needed, prune, damson and greengage varieties are good pollinating partners. In plums there are dessert varieties suitable for eating fresh, and culinary varieties for cooking, while most featured here can be used for both.

It’s important to select the right kind of rootstock for your variety and to suit your location and purpose, as they’ll determine how much growth they make each year, how large the trees grow and, to a degree, influence fruit production and quality. If you want a dwarf tree around 2½-3m (8-10ft) tall, ideal for a bush or fan, select a Pixy root stock, but thin out fruit to avoid trees over producing smaller fruit. Krymsk 1/VVA-1 rootstock has the same characteristics as Pixy. Being slower growing, trees on these stocks will need staking for support until they establish. The most popular and widelyused stock is St Julian A, which is ideal for most purposes, either free-standing trees to 3-3½m (10-11½ft) or fans. Brompton stock is the most vigorous, producing trees over 4½m (15ft). Trees on root stocks will take three to five years to start fruiting. Root stocks will sucker and you’ll need to pull out sucker shoots at the base.

Plums need an open, sunny site or, if being trained as a fan or pyramid, a south or west-facing wall. Avoid exposed sites and frost pockets. A moist, welldrained, neutral or slightly acidic, fertile soil is ideal. Plant barerooted trees from November.

Prune from late spring and summer, (April to August)