Our Fruit Collection
		Our Rose Collection

Greenmantle Nursery
3010 Ettersburg Road
Garberville CA 95542
(707) 986-7504

Plums Our apologies: We no longer propagate/offer plum benchgrafts or trees. This page is for reference only...

Plums have been planted in Southern Humboldt since the homestead period, and some old trees miraculously survive. Commercial prune orchards were attempted in the early days, but disease problems caused most of these to be abandoned or replaced with apple trees.

Survivor Prune plum

Here at Greenmantle, we have focused our attention on the various European types of plum (prunes, gages, etc.) rather than the Japanese hybrids like Satsuma and Santa Rosa. The Japanese plums as a class tend to bloom a few weeks earlier than their European counterparts, making them very vulnerable to late frost and winter storms. They are also more susceptible to bacterial and fungus problems.

Rootstocks

We graft our plum varieties on myrobalan seedling which makes a full-size standard tree requiring about 18 feet of space.

Plums on myrobalan seedling can handle wet, heavy clay soils better than other types of fruit. While breeders are working on the issue, the currently available selection of dwarfing rootstocks for plum do not seem reliable or healthy enough.

Green Gage Plum… Originally named Reine Claude by the French, it was renamed by the British around 1725. By any name, this is surely one of the world's great fruit varieties....
Illustration by William Hooker (1779-1832)

PLUM VARIETIES

All varieties listed below are self-fertile & don't require pollination from other trees.

DAMSONS  Briceland Damson

Pearl Prune .................................... Kirke's Blue Plum

The outstanding prune of our collection is the Moyer, a very large Italian-type with orange flesh; excellent fresh or dry.Other prunes of special interest are French Petit, the classic "unimproved" variety which we collected from a very old orchard; and
Pearl, an excellent pale yellow prune hybrid raised by Luther Burbank.

Not so long ago, the Green Gage plum was the best known and loved plum in Europe and America. It is now heading for extinction in this country, largely due to trueness-to-name problems that have made the real Green Gage hard to find. We recovered ours from an original homestead tree documented to have been bought from Oregon Nursery Company (ORENCO) in 1905. Green Gage may be too fragile for commerce, but this fact - and its superlative flavor - make it an indispensable addition to any home orchard.

Our Briceland Damson is an almost wild form, collected from a naturalized thicket on the banks of Miller Creek in Briceland. This is the traditional variety for jam and other culinary uses.

Still Life with Plums - 18 th century Holland

Fruit Collection - Rose Collection

All original text and images © Greenmantle Nursery 2005 -2020