A hint of cherry in these plums
HANFORD, Calif. — Combining the high sugar and flavor of cherries with the larger fruit size and extended season of plums has been a long-standing dream for fruit breeders. But such crosses are difficult to make successfully so that the hybrids yield lots of high-quality fruit. Zaiger’s Genetics of Modesto, the inventors of Pluots and Apriums, managed the trick, and the fruit started showing up several years ago in very small quantities at farmers markets; it’s taken until now for the first commercial orchard to be planted and start bearing.
That’s 18 acres farmed by the Warmerdam family in Hanford, south of Fresno, which John Warmerdam walked through last Monday, deciding when to harvest. The trees look like plum trees, and the fruits of his major variety, Pixie Sweet, look like tiny reddish-purple plums, 11⁄ inches
4 in diameter; the flesh is yellow-amber, with two cherry features: a pink ring under the skin and a small seed. It would take imagination to detect cherry in the flavor, but ripe ones are sweet, rich and fruity, with a definite something extra.
Warmerdam has the exclusive rights to grow and sell commercially Zaiger’s small-fruited plum-cherry hybrids, which he is marketing under the name “Verry Cherry plums.” His Pixie Sweets will appear soon in select Whole Foods in the L.A. area, and at Grow in Manhattan Beach.
Farmers market growers are allowed to buy up to 100 trees, and about a dozen sell the fruit under names such as Cherub and Cherrium. Murray Family Farms’ crop was snapped up last week by U-pickers and purveyors, but Arnett Farms of Fresno will offer it Saturday at the Torrance and Irvine farmers markets; Sunday at Brentwood, Hollywood, Mar Vista and Studio City; and Tuesday at Culver City.
There’s a newer, as yet unnamed plum-cherry variety, slightly larger, purplish with a green background, which ripens in mid-August, and is said to be even more sweet and flavorful.
It seems likely we’ll see a lot more plum-cherry hybrids. “In many ways, they are a grower’s dream,” says Warmerdam. “They set very easily, they hold well on the tree, and they’re easy to handle. The real challenge is whether we can get good production while maintaining the flavor qualities.” If so, he says, “my vision is to grow thousands of acres.”