Cold Hardy Plums and Cherry Hybrids: Summer Field Notes

picking sour cherries from rows that are a mix of the u of sask varieties, there's some variation in size and ripening

, the smaller ones are probably carmine jewel, the largest maybe juliette. the mix is good for hand picking...

pin cherry just starting to ripen in the second half of July

These ones are a shelterbelt variety from the pfra, the trees...

toka softwood cuttings, a hybrid plum tree that has some cool traits, it's crossed with Simonii the chinese apricot

plum, done about a century ago by hansen in SD. it survives -40, grows plums that taste like bubblegum, its softwood can root and it grafts onto chokecherry. suffice to say it's been featured in my experiments with own...

sweet cherry grafted to wild pin cherry

there's a few northern cultivars that have some cold hardiness, iput is one, I'm trying about six types now, all grafted up high onto pensylvanica which is I think zone 2 hardy. so far, despite knowing that avium is...

a first round of softwood, a little flaccid

its hot, and the cuttings are about a week early. turgidity can pick up under mist, it keeps your lettuce crisp in the grocery store. some cool ones in here, if they work - eurasia, toka, black ice, kyrgyz, bogataya. if...

sweet cherry, Prunus avium - a russian cultivar Lenningrad Black

flowering after 2 winters with -40C grafted onto this pin cherry. kind of awesome, sweet cherry is not supposed to grow here, maybe some combination of the...

manchurian apricot seedlings

I started these in april in the greenhouse, here the batch is transplanted into large plug trays and starting to size up after three months. Our apricot seed is locally...

this caterpillar hiding in the chokecherry branches looks exactly like a chokecherry twig

I found it while picking saskatoons...

cherries, these are a collection of the hybrid sour cherries that we can grow on the Canadian prairies

They grow as a large bush or a multi stemmed shrub, fruit in July (ripe today July 16), and they're the result of decades of breeding work. nearly as large as a sweet cherry (P. avium), and when fully ripe they can have...

sweet cherry peppers

these small peppers are a fun size and shape to snack on or use in a salad etc, and they have no heat so you can use them like bell...

nanking cherry, ripe today in mid July

slightly earlier than the larger sour cherries and evans by about. week. sooner in full sun, another bush I checked had orange / some green fruit but it was in full shade. nanking can be pruned as a bush, and are range...

wild plums, by september they'll developed a red and yellow color and I'll collect them for seed

This tree is a 25-30 year old seedling plum, in a small town backyard. all that I can say about it is that the fruit and leaves are typical for prunus americana, and given that hybrid cultivar plums have little pollen...

nanking cherry just starting to ripen on this shaded bush

it's july 12, and we're in southern MB - the 35C this week should move things along, an other years I've picked ripe nanking right in this range about the middle of the month. the fruit will hang on for about two weeks...

manor cherry plum, two batches of cuttings collected one week apart

the first set are a good stage to pot up and move along into the next zone, they're forming a fibrous root mass - this is all you need to support the plant. in the second photo they're not ready, my usual rule of thumb...

toka plum, on its own roots

with just the right conditions, this hybrid plum (part Prunus simonii the chinese apricot plum) - does well on its own roots. I have a set of three year old plants in pots doing well. I start...

black ice plum, a western sandcherry hybrid

I hoped it would share the strong rooting potential in other chums - cherry plums as the common name refers to prunus besseyi hybrids like sapalta, opata, manor, new oka, dura etc - a collection of these hybrid bushy...

canada wild plum

I collect seed from all around MB, here is a small accession with some amount of hybridization growing in the greenhouse. I'll keep these to grow out. an accession is just a plant growing from one specific source, you...

first crop of wild plums growing on this draft, it's a four year american wild plum old graft onto chokecherry

it's flowered the last two years, but needed a second genetically distinct branch added for pollination. Prunus americana is reasonably graft compatible with chokecherry, not every graft I've survived this long but...

bei tang graft, before I chopped it up for cuttings

it's a recently named hybrid cherry plum, a cross between sapalta...

mustang, bushes planted four years ago to trim for cuttings

we've had lots of rain so the cuttings are big this year, 12" to too long I had to keep them 6-9" so they stick reasonably in the medium. 4000ppm iba, a bit of fungicide (secret ingredient in seems) and bottom heat on...

epsilon cherry plum, a happy addition to the collection here

to get this on its own roots - I was lucky enough to get scion wood over the winter. grafted onto wild plum, here on an interstem on chokecherry rootstock. the growth flushes out, I collect cuttings and root under mist...

a few z grafts, you can see how on the larger rootstock it helps heal over the cut faster than a graft just off to one

size. the large one is an unnamed plug directly onto chokecherry, and the small ones are american wild plum interstems between chokecherry and black ice plum - a sandcherry hybrid I'm trying to root this summer...

evans cherry seedlings

at the orchard where I collected these, there was a little variation between the evans trees, so it's possible they were seedlings, if that's true then I would expect these to have comparable large cherries. there's all...

american wild plum, canadian wild plum, sapa cherry plum, pembina plum

sapa cherry plum

one of the OG chums from 1908 in the same wave as Opata. Sapa means black. sand cherry x japanese plum. flesh is sweet and tastey, reminds me of a really good sand cherry, which if you haven't had is cherry/plum the way...

prunus nigra, the elusive canada wild plum

distinctive double bumps on the leaf margins (the profile is called crenate, the sharp version is called serrate as in serrated), fruit over 1" and oblong shaped, ripens around now through early sept. I'm finding these...

siberian c peach, possibly a peach that can survive the winter in Manitoba at -40, but can it thrive enough to fruit

I suspect in the right location, and maybe grown as a bush it can. btw wow they grow well...

double worked plum

on the rootstock is a short length of Prunus americana, and then on top Yakima plum, a cold hardy european plum. will it survive -40? we'll find out, it's in a semi sheltered location, five ft off the ground, and on a...

found this potted nadia plum, completely forgot out it, rooted from softwood and it's been in this gallon pot for two

winters. happy to see it survived, nadia is a sweet cherry x japanese plum (salicina x avium) hybrid, and I didn't think it would be cold hardy here... wonder if being on its own roots helped. surviving -40 in a...

started some orchard rows of plums and a block of apples

42 plum, 24 apples so far, half are just seedlings I'll graft over. in this space there's full sun, light soil that will need some mulch, and lots of deer. it's right beside the beehives our neighbour keeps, so...

red leafed, wild black, new oxheart/oblong, garrington (seedling

), large garrington? seedling. .. of note the wild and garrington fruit have a round seed, the rest have a pointed elongated one. about the pfra's seed orchards, the used garrington, goertz and wild collected seed to...

chokecherry selection with oxheart shaped - oval fruit, super long racemes that trail into each other

it's from the pfra, so maybe a seedling of garrington or goertz but the shape is distinct. I...

sapalta cherry plum

last 2 photos are comparison sapalta top, mustang bottom. sapalta is sweeter with a slightly bitter skin, like a wild plum, very similar to but better tasting than mustang. larger than mustang, more elongated seed. kind...

mustang cherry plum, just about ripe I think the color would go a little more burgundy

this is usually just a rootstock, though the idea of growing out the seeds to evaluate for their...

branches just hanging to the ground loaded with chokeberries, these are the native prunus virginiana var melanocarpa

bei tang, a hybrid between cherry plum and apricot

happy to see that it roots, it wasn't a guarantee, a good outlook for propagating more. complex prunus hybrids are exciting because there are many possibilities, and with the sandcherry parentage it's just a few years to...

late ripening chokecherry or a red fruited variety

I flagged some branches to follow up. there's more genetic variation in...

wild plums, these ones are some mix of prunus nigra and americana

the leaves and fruit are in between. the seedlings will be good...

prunus fruticosa, or mongolian cherry

from seed in 2023, just have the...

chokecherry cultivars

two with red leaves, but quite different ripening times, garrington an early large one, and our wild chokecherry var melanocarpa which ripens...

beach plum, prunus maritima

I have a small bed started from seedlings, and they've survived two manitoba winters, the plant is possibly zone 3 even though we're outside of it's native maritime range. so it's cool to have this species growing, and...

picking cherries today at a local upick near Elkhorn MB

nanking cherry, collected a good box full on one large thirty year old bush

black ice plums growing on chokecherry with an american wild plum interstem

one of a few dozen cultivars I'm trying on these interstems this year. vigorously growing chokecherry with a trunk 1" or more, in good sunlight are suitable. I expect the plum to grow a little larger so still waiting to...

evans cherry and other Prunus cerasus hybrids can root from softwood, with some stronger iba and bottom heat to speed

it up. the same works for some plums. the trick is what comes next, get them to grow a bit and then harden off for the winter, still working...

apricot on chokecherry with americana interstem

i did around 4-5 branches at shoulder height, growing good so far. this double working is basically doing two grafts at once, first the american wild plum goes onto the stock tree, and a few inches up that graft, another...

western sandcherry from seed this spring, collected from a neighbour's hansen bush cherries

they were excellent tasting, no idea yet if other sandcherries are as good. so this population will be kept separate from the ones I've been growing for apricot rootstocks, and will be used for breeding hybrids. so many...

western sandcherry grafted to *chokecherry*, showing some red indicating stress, early dormancy, no real growth

so at least this graft unlikely to pull through. compared to prunus americana grafts which have dark green leaves and a couple ft of growth. I still want sandcherries...

potting up a plum tree on a mustang rootstock

it just worked out for our growing space and late spring grafting that this year all the grafted plums are in pots. what's interesting is the fibrous root system of a cherry plum hybrid stock seems to grow well in a...

sapalta cherry plums, 4 weeks under mist with some bottom heat, medium strength rooting hormone

it's a hybrid with the western sandcherry, which is why it roots from cuttings so easily. more people should grow cherry...

often when you see new leaves the softwood cuttings have rooted

at 3 weeks into the season some of the earliest cuttings are ready, a small tug on them also indicates rooting. these are cherry plums, the succulent leaves desiccated but the cuttings are still in good shape, and after...

purple/red leafed chokecherry, fun to graft these around and see the color change in june

the new leaves are green and change to purple...

one of our sweet cherry grafts onto pin cherry, well it made a flower

notable, first Prunus avium flower at our nursery, maybe the first one I've seen. for sure the first sweet cherry...

short interstems of toka on this combo brookred and brookgold plum grafted onto chokecherry

the elusive canada wild plum, prunus nigra

plums from our daughter’s backyard, not sure about cultivar

anyone know? freestone, tasty, fully zone 3 hardy. I grew...

white nanking cherries to grow next year, big thanks to @nature_is_fucking_dope_ for the trade

Prunus tomentosa has a fun potential for breeding to produce new hybrids, and how many cherries are white? for eg black nanking is a nanking x sandcherry hybrid. trying to build a collection for propagation and future...

checking on plums, this tree was fully ripe by aug 20 last year, red and starting to drop

this year plums in southern manitoba seem to be a full 2 weeks later, I suspect because last summer was unusually hot and dry, and this year was unusually wet.. it’s surprising, last year I was picking...

two chokecherry cultivars, first one is lee red, second is probably Schubert

they graft easily onto wild chokecherry and add some color. Lee Red has larger leaves on my grafts, not sure if that’s common, it does...

d’artagnan cherry from u of sask getting potted up

cuttings from june 19 are at the right stage to pot and harden off, cherries take a while. next up trying some things to get them to resume growth...

more photos of baker’s gold apricot

my review is they’re good, similar to ones i’ve had from the grocery store, larger. clingstone, not tart, mild flavour, hey it’s the first apricot I’ve had in a long while and a month earlier than any plums around, a...

baker’s gold apricots ripe this week

one of a few zone 3 hardy apricot cultivars, and it’s a...

subculturing some american wild plum

first time trying this, will update if they grow and I was able to keep everything...

romance series hybrid cherries from the u of sask fruit breeding program

75% prunus cerasus (same species as evans) and 25% prunus fruticosa, a...

a local apricot introduction, Baker’s Gold apricot

juliette cherries, finally got to try some

most of the u of sask sour cherries look similar to me but do have different flavours, and I’m sure sugar content, tartness and ripening times. I’m propagating juliette and d’artagnan this...

prunus nigra, the elusive canada wild plum

seeds were an adventure to find last fall. potting these up to...

caging some canada wild plum along a forest path

these are actually a few years old, and wildlife seems to find and eat them down to the ground reliably, constantly...

nanking cherry, prunus tomentosa

nanking cherry coming up soon, these ripen here in a couple of weeks

nanking cherry going into pots, watch me try this with one hand

I’ve had these just bundled into large pots waiting to plant, and the root systems are small enough that I think they’ll be...

beach plum, prunus maritima

native to the east coast, supposed to survive zone 3 winters. these ones made it through last winter under the snow. it’s a prunus species that i’ve never seen in cultivation or offered at garden centers in our area, and...

cherry plum cultivar new oka, well rooted after a month

I started some plants last year from scions, so from graft to rooted cuttings, into a bed for the year to make more cuttings the next spring.. I have maybe a dozen here going into pots. more next year,. it takes time to...

nanking cherry left, cupid sour cherry center, compared to grocery store sweet cherry right

black nanking is a nanking x western sandcherry hybrid (prunus tomentosa x besseyi)

both of it’s parents root quickly from softwood, and it’s the same. here is a cutting...

little cherry plum dropped it’s leaves but bounced back

probably from too much mist. I try and calibrate it for the day depending on temperature and cloud cover, we’ve been getting way more rain than usual and on those days the timed mist can be dialed back. some setups use...

IBA + NAA left, IBA talc right on cherry plum

I think left will quickly become a...

spring american wild plum grafts onto chokecherry

maybe six weeks old. I trim back most of the epicormic growth but not all of it, actually letting it reduce vigour improves...

double flowering plum, an old bush that’s fruiting for the first time that I’ve noticed

Will collect the seed, some weird hybrid might result. I have a nanking and evans nearby, and all three could have better pollination, need to figure out what to plant or graft, for the...

own root plums are putting on way more growth than expected, this set is the earliest june cuttings

many plants have an ideal window of maturity / time for softwood, takes some experimentation to find out. A protocol is the details like timing, materials and methods to propagate plants, and specific protocols for many...

prunus maackii, manchurian cherry rooted softwood from spring grafts

One of my goals this year was to use this two step process, and i’ve had some luck with a...

prunus americana I think, along a trail at the Frank Skinner arboretum in Manitoba

Seems to grow fine in the shady...

an old plum tree - I’m hoping to identify the cultivar

It’s clingstone, ripe today (mid august) in southern manitoba, skin slightly bitter but...

finished budding plums and apricots for the year I think

Maybe I’ll do more, not sure how late it can go. In warmer places I hear July is the right time, but here early august seems like the...

own root hydrid plums, “toka” cultivar developed 100 years ago in south dakota

The bright green flish of growth after rooting is a very good sign that the new trees are healthy. I wonder how many of them have been grown on their own...

own root plum trees well rooted in their pots, hardened off and going into nursery beds

Toka is the best cultivar I’ve trialed so far for this method, but steadily finding more through experimentation. Some prunus is very hard to root, like americana just gives up and drops it’s leaves, maybe it needs the...

green elf plum rooted cutting

It’s an old cherry plum bred in Saskatchewan. It’s a cross between manchurian plum and sand cherry.. P. ussuriensis x P. besseyi .. kind of awesome parentage for a tasty green plum, I would like to cross it with some of...

help wanted to ID this plum rootstock, cuttings from root suckers

It’s zone 3 hardy, few options right? Americana, sand cherry, mustang are the 3 I know of. Looks the most like americana, suckers like it.. but it roots super easily which seems different. Myrobalan isn’t hardy here to...

same plant different rooting hormone

nanking cherry at 5 weeks. right is off the shelf iba talc, left is an in house formula i’m testing made from pure hormones in an aqueous stock solution. left is a stronger result the rooting is up the...

kuban comet asian plum softwood rooted

Took about a month, firm softwood cuttings 4000ppm iba talc some bottom heat. Own root plum trees are the goal, just takes some trialing to sort out the recipe. These and most other plum cultivars I root this summer will...

compartmentalization in an evans cherry cutting from a tray that was too wet, it was under a misting nozzle that drips

I’m showing the process of trimming and redipping in some iba talc - and the results. Also a bundle of cuttings from a tray at the right moisture level, all healthy an...

nanking cherry, prunus tomentosa #nankingcherry

kappa cherry plums

working on multiplying these hundred year old cultivars like sapa, opata, dura, manor, and some newer ones like sapalta and new oka. prunus names are funny, I’m also grow nadia, green elf and p. cerasifera which are all...

pin cherries are ripe, here you can see just a few pin cherries - the wild ones are like this, they're quite sparse

1951 bulletin from south dakota, some of the best information is in these old documents

For example, I’m propagating chums.. and they’ll all in this chart from 70 years ago...

organized taking softwood cuttings

bagged cuttings are fine in the fridge for a day, prep the leaves and print some labels before heading to the greenhouse. Chums are a good example where good labels are...

black nanking cherry rooted at 16 days

plum grafts from one month ago are starting to take off #grafting

red leafed chokecherry grafted onto wild chokecherry

toka plum on chokecherry grafted last spring

block of black chokecherry, prunus virginiana var melanocarpa grafted over to an assortment of other prunus to trial

compatibility, grow out budwood for august budding onto rootstocks, and to produce softwood for rooting. So far this season take was high across every prunus species, and at 6-8 weeks every graft that leafed out...

stratified prunus americana seeds before planting today

They’ve been in damp sand in refrigeration for six months. I could have planted a couple of weeks ago, just needed to make...

more success rooting hybrid Japanese / American plum variety Toka

cuttings at 4-5 weeks had callous dipped again in 0.4% IBA and restuck in groups, what I’m starting to consider renovating a tray, added bottom heat for the first time this season. Rooting response has been good, the...

Toka plum rooted cutting

all of the evans cherry trees in my orchard had about one cherry on them this year

To be fair, between the deer and taking softwood cuttings they had quite a trim, but cherries grow on last year’s wood which the deer doesn’t like and I don’t use in the greenhouse. For a self pollinated tree with a...

chip budding plums

We’ve had by far the best result with Toka plum this year in our experimental grading trials onto wild rootstock, some of our grafts done in may have grown 4’ with secondary scaffolds. We’re now chip...

we had a wind storm this morning that broke off this grafted plum branch (shown upside down), there was a couple feet

of flush growth above it. at 8 weeks there’s more girdling than expected. Maybe I wrapped it too tight. One thing to pay close attention to is the strength of the graft union, if the tissues are less than compatible it...

summer update for our plum on wild choke cherry grafts

Nearly every prunus variety we tried has grown, the most vigorous growth on this set of trees on a sunny hill. Success with this type of grafting in the first year seems to depend on the age and location of the root...

An Evans cherry I planted in 2004, so about 20 years old #evanscherrytree #evanscherries

planting out a bed of mustang cherry rootstocks

These should be large enough to bud in July. Our reserves of scion wood for many cultivars have been grafted out around the orchard, one reason to have an orchard next to the nursery - a ready supply of scion wood. This...

plum frameworked onto choke cherry at five weeks

Plum grafts on wild choke cherry

Our grafts were all done in the first three weeks of May and many are showing signs of growth, so a successful union so far. The take rate seems to correlate with age of the root stock and competing vegetation on it more...

Double flowering plum, Prunus triloba

nanking cherry grafted on wild chokecherry

(Prunus tomentosa on Prunus virginiana). Will it take? I’m hopeful for this combination. Also it’s fun when scions blossom, feels like a small success...

our plum blossoms all seem to have pulled through -2

9C this morning. Good thing the tomatoes are still inside under grow lights. #blossom...

small choke cherry tree grafted over to plums at three weeks

keeping the under growth continually rubbed off to ensure all of the growth is focused on the grafts seems key. For larger trees Instead of defoliating I’ve been topping all the other...

Nanking cherries (Prunus tomentosa) ripen here in mid July, and the seeds from this tree filled a bed of seedlings

we’re growing this year. We also had good results with softwood cuttings, they root quickly and heavily, and we have grafts of them growing on our wild choke cherries. Quickly becoming my favourite prunus to propagate...

grafted plums are taking off

This one is Nanking cherry on the left and Toka plum on the right. These are putting on better growth than our orchard plum trees on their third leaf, the Prunus virginiana frame tree is well adapted to our sandy soil...

Mustang cherries for budding this fall

While around the orchard I like to experiment with rootstocks, the plum trees we’ll want to sell will be grafted on these. It’s a complex Prunus hybrid developed by a local nursery that has good compatibility with many...

progress on one of our multi grafted prunus virginiana

This size of tree seems to produce the most vigorous growth. #grafting...

hard frost last night, below zero from midnight to sunrise

this thermometer hangs about shoulder height in the middle of the orchard. all of our plums are in...

Nanking cherry harvest

Super tasty fruit from a tree I planted in 2004. Picked the tree over the weekend, so I guess these are ripe the same time as saskatoons...

Nanking cherries at three weeks rooted from softwood cuttings in our mist propagation

Toka plum grafted to wild choke cherry #prunus #grafting