A Plum Assignment

No Wonder The Name Of This Juicy Stone Fruit, Loved Around The World, Is A Byword For All That’s Easy And Desirable

- Melissa King

When the weather turns cool and the trees are bare, my thoughts always turn to planting deciduous trees and shrubs.

Of all of the deciduous fruit trees, I have a real fondness for plums. As a small tree they are delightfully pretty with glossy green leaves, attractive autumn foliage colour and beautiful spring blossom. Combine these qualities with a hefty crop of plump, sweet fruit and it’s clear why the humble plum is a backyard staple.

Many plum crops also linger into autumn, when we are desperately trying to hold on to the rich palette of summer fruits.

A plum’s sweetness and intensity of flavour seems to double when picked and eaten ripe from the tree but they can also be cooked into delicious pies, cakes, pastries, jams and sauces.

The Japanese varieties with large, soft, juicy fruit are perhaps the most familiar. Most have golden flesh with the exception of blood plums, which are red to the stone. The smallerfruited European plums vary in colour from pale green-yellow to blue and purple with golden flesh and tend to like the weather a little cooler than Japanese plums. Some can also be dried as prunes.

VARIETIES