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  • Our trees are organic

Spacing and growing conditions

Plum trees are naturally small trees, generally growing to a height of up to about 5 metres (16 feet), with a spread of around 4 metres (13 feet). This can be an advantage if you want a tree that takes up less space – but make sure you bear in mind that you need two of them in order to have fruit! They require plenty of sunlight and well-drained soil. It is also particularly important for plum trees to plant them at an adequate distance, to allow a good circulation of air around the trees. Our cultivars are all highly resistant to black knot disease, which affects principally European plum trees.

growth-of-a-plum-tree-in-canada

Home-grown plums

If you have never tasted fresh home-grown plums before, you are in for a treat! Plums you find in the store are almost always picked before they are completely ripe, because of their short storage life. The problem is that plums, unlike some other fruits, do not continue to develop sugars after they are picked. They will never be at their sweet, juicy, and melt-in-the-mouth best, until they are allowed to ripen fully on the tree. Once you have tasted fruit fresh off your own plum tree, we promise you will never look back!

Eric harvesting plums

Pollination

Our plum varieties are hybrids of Canadian, American and Japanese plums. If you are thinking of planting a plum tree, it is important to understand how their pollination works. Hybrid plum trees are self-sterile, and cannot produce fruit alone. Moreover, they are not good pollinators for one another. Even if you plant two different varieties next to each other, you are unlikely to harvest any fruit.

Instead, hybrid plum trees need a wild plum tree to pollinate them: either the Canada plum (Prunus nigra) which is considered the best pollinator, or the American plum (Prunus americana) which also works well. So if you intend to plant plum trees, you must also plant at least one of these nearby, unless of course you already happen to have one. One wild plum tree is enough to pollinate up to around five grafted plum trees.

Plum tree blooming
Find your hardiness zone

To choose the trees that will grow well for you, the first step is to know the hardiness zone in which they will be planted. If you do not already know your zone, you can find it here by writing the name of the municipality in which your trees will be planted.

When you select your zone, each variety that is hardy in your area will be identified, to make your choice easier.

Data was extracted from the Natural Resources Canada Hardiness Zones map.

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Discover our varieties

The plum cultivars we propagate have been chosen from dozens that we have been testing for several years in our experimental orchard. All are American and Japanese hybrid plums, which we prefer over European plums for their resistance to black knot disease. The trees you will find here have all proven themselves fully cold-hardy in at least zone 4, and some can grow as far north as zone 2. They are the most dependable plum trees we have found, and all give mouth-watering fruit.