Kitchen Garden Forum

My pluot (plum-apricot cross) has set fruit for the first time this year, two years since planting. It is always exciting with a new fruit!!
It is absolutely hardy having easily survived the last two Winters. It flowers very early, about two weeks before the plums.
It is proving rather vigorous, needing a lot of pruning on the supplied rootstock St Julian.
Is anyone else growing this fruit and how reliable have you found it?

Coo, realfood, I thought that was a rather bizarre typo!

Never heard of it, but keep us posted, it sounds as though it might be really nice.

I also thought it was a typo, it sounds quite unusual If you hard prune your pluot it can make it grow even more in response, try a light prune just to shape it. I have a jostaberry which is a cross between a gooseberry and black currant, that is very hardy, vigorous too, about 5ft wide and six ft tall, and absolutely laden with fruit, this year, it flowers very early too, the bees like it, not much flowers that early.

We have jostaberries too. We bought one plant which grew really quickly so we cut back some stems and popped them in as cuttings - all rooted so now we have several and have given some away. We had masses of fruit last year.

We also are quite excited that the nectarine we bought last year and are growing in a large tub also has set some fruit - hope they don't drop off.

Do you recommend a pluot?

I've read about jostaberries but never tasted one and wonder what they taste like. Do they veer towards blackcurrants, or gooseberries?

I'm intrigued by the pluot and wonder what their texture will be like, i.e. juicy like a plum or rather "pappy" like an apricot.. I've never heard of them and wonder how long it will be before we can buy them commercially.

I'm another who was foxed by the assumed typo

Apparently the pluot (or plumcot) is more plum-like than the aprium. And there seem to be more varieties of pluot than you could wave a pair of secateurs at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluot

...not to forget the Peacotum, the Plumcot and the Nectaplum.

Primrose wrote:I've read about jostaberries but never tasted one and wonder what they taste like. Do they veer towards blackcurrants, or gooseberries?

Difficult to say as they have a taste of their own really with hints of both - the texture is gooseberry and it is fairly sweet but there again we find most fruits sweet that other people don't. It's difficult to remember the taste exactly and I can't taste one just yet to try and analyse it more - I'll update when I have some ripe,

Growing a Pluot is an experiment for me, and it will be another year before I can give an opinion. While they are self-fertile, they are so early with me in Glasgow that there are very, very few insects flying at that time. so I tried hand pollination.

We've just had some jostaberries from the freezer and I can now say that they lean towards currants rather than gooseberries in flavour