Here in continental Europe green gages are called Reine Claude and we consider them as the most prized plums. They are perfectly ripe only when the green colour aquires a yellowish-amber hue.
Fausto, I remember watching your channel back in the day. I was bummed out to see that your videos aren't online anymore, but I'm sure you have your reasons. Cheers!
My great grandparents grew many fruit trees on their farm in Southern California. The Green Gage plum was my favorite. When you bite into one, the skin is quite sour, then the pulp quickly overwhelms that with a gush of sweetness and complex flavor. I haven’t found this plum in more than 60 years now. Makes me so nostalgic to remember it. Plums must be tree ripened! I’ve never had a good plum from a supermarket. Pluots yes, but never plums.
A tree-ripened Victoria plum may be one of my favourite fruit. I haven't had access to a tree for decades but I still won't buy supermarket plums. If you can transport it five miles and it is still in one piece, it was not ripe.
That’s the reason why I always buy pluots, apriums and plumcots because like apricots they will ripen in a paper bag over time, while standard plums tend to just shrivel.
I'm in Southern California and was afraid it doesn't get cold enough for chill hours for the greengage to fruit but that's promising. What part of southern California?
@@juliusebola9712 In no way is there more variety in fruits in the tropics than elsewhere. You are just used to the fruits around you. Just go look at Apple varieties alone.
Europe habitant here. Absolutely can relate to your descriptions. You've made me eat more fruit since I've found your channel than I've eaten in all my life. New addiction 😁
With so many bad addictions in the world... isnt it nice to find a good one? 😁 One of my fav good vibes channels for sure. Hes a pretty good story teller too! 👍
Australia here! Greengages can be found in home gardens fairly often here but you won't see them sold at the store. My mother has one tree which we all fight over to this day!
Luisa's origin is unclear. It was found on property of Polish immigrants if I remember correctly so it's either a chance seedling or it was brought over from Europe, definitely not bred. This is not Luisa (I am growing it). It's most likely Ben Dor's Lemon/Lamoon plum www.bendorfruits.com/plums.html
In France, the little green or yellow plums are very common, we call them Mirabelles. They are a Prunus domestica variety. They are very cool, because they are one of the rare fruits where you can plant the seed and still obtain the same fruit.
This made me feel very homesick for greengages back home. We would eat tens of them off the tree. My grandmother also made damson gin, damson pie etc. Damsons taste “brown” and sharp and syrupy.
Here in Texas we used to always have plums in the super markets but recently I’ve noticed I never see them anymore. I know we grow them in state because you can still buy them roadside from Dallas to Lubbock
Cherriums are fantastic. 3 parts cherry to one part plum. The fruit tastes like cherry, the flesh is plum like and the size of the fruit is half the size of a medium sized plum. I have grown them and they are the best!
@@kayleep3329 Cherums (for cherry-plum hybrids with cherry genes and characteristics predominant) or Plerries (predominantly plum). I grew cherriums and they looked like a small reddish plum twce the size of a cherry but had a small pit and a cherry flavor mixed with plum. Plerries would be larger fruits with a plum flavor with a hint of cherry. These plants are not shy in terms of bearing fruit as long as they have a pollinator nearby.
Wow, those huge dark plums are standard in the US? I learned something today! I'm from the UK and have lived in France and Germany and have never seen one! I'm familiar with small, purple plums, damsons, zwetschge, and mirabelles. I've heard of greengages but never had one
I am in the UK. M&S had one about twenty years ago called an Omega. Perfectly ripe, for a change, cost an arm and a leg. Tasted like a cherry but the size of large peach.
Yep. I honestly hadnt ever seen anything other than the big purple ones, and to be honest I think hes being a bit too harsh on them. They arent very sweet, but they are very sour, but its a very very good kind of sour. Those purple plums are one of my favorite foods due to how sour and soft they are.
That "lemon plum" you have looks like a Flavor Grenade Pluot. Sometimes they are green tinged and rounder, and sometimes they are red, yellow, and pointy like yours. I'm glad you got to try the Greengage. We are lucky enough to have them here in the Bay Area and it's always a treat when the orchard near me (shoutout to Andy's Orchard in Morgan Hill) gets them in!
Don’t forget the damson! My aunt had a greengage tree and a damson, as well as ones purple outside and yellow inside, and some red outside and inside. They all fruited at different times, if I recall the damsons were the latest.
I personally think that plums are awesome, they come in so many different varieties with their own distinctive flavors, colors, aromas and textures. They also make delicious cross-hybrids with other stonefruits such as Pluots.
As many varied and exotic fruits as I have tried, few things still come close to the sweet, simple pleasure of a ripe plum. Thanks for making this video, excited to see some of the more "plain jane" fruits getting some time to shine.
Plums aren't usually my go-to fruit. But green Gages are hands down my favorite variety of these for all aesthetic qualities like Sweet/sour/honey flavor ratio. I've only ever eaten one from a tree, usually stolen from over someones fence.
It was interesting to learn about the lemon plum which I’d never heard of. You are quite correct about the source of the information from the website erroneously claiming it is related to citrus...
Greengages, also called "Reine Claude" was a variety of plum that the Turkish gave to France in the 16th century after both countries allied against Austria. The Turkish sultan, Suleiman the Magnificient, named the plum after the queen of France of that time. Since then, it is very common in France, and good greengages are the best fruit you can find in Europe by a mile.
Hi Jared. The plums you said were those to be sold dried are commonly grown here in Germany, often in private gardens, and are mostly called Zwetschgen instead of Pflaumen. They have laxative effects, when you soak the dried ones and eat a bunch of them. Same happens when you eat them a little unripe. I love and prefer the tarder Zwetschgen over other plums since my childhood, when I often ate them fresh from the tree. They are also sold dried and drowned in Armgnac, a french brandy, which is the oldest known spirit in France, and together with the plums tastes like a harmless liqueur.
I used to have a greengage tree in my backyard! (I used to live in Tasmania, Australia). Whilst they tasted delicious, I often found them a little too sweet for my liking though
@@dawnmist2259 I'm not sure, but I've never really hunted around for them since I moved to Brisbane (Like I said- I wasn't a fan of the sweetness). Good luck on your search though!
In Lachute, Quebec, there is a sweet, peachy colored plum similar to the little green variety that you showed. It grows wild behind the McDonald's on Bethany street; in the first 500 yards of the trails that snakes around between the Lachute Golf Course, a farmland, and the Eco Center. These fruits deserve to be saved by anyone willing to try sprouting them at home. New York's climate is very similar to ours, surely you could run across the border after the pandemic blows over? This dissed farmland is host to funky wild apples as well. I'm sure that you've never eaten an apple as weird and heirloom as these naturally cross pollinated varietals. If any viewers living in Lachute (or nearby) can send a care package, that would be cool. I'm stuck in Montreal on red alert lockdown
Greengage is indeed one of the delicacies in Europe. Usually eaten a little bit more ripe than the one you had, when it starts taking an orangish hue. It is towards the top of the best plums available, but there is one usually rated even higher, the tiny mirabelle plum. If you find some, go for it.
this is super interesting, i don't live that far from you in the US but my plum availability is different. we do get those dark almost black plums but i have never seen them so big! our local store gets some yellowy plums sometimes, but they are also smaller and very sweet (my fav). the majority of plums in see are red and small, but not as small as the sugar plums you showed. also i've never seen the sugar plums. I LOVE PLUMS, PLUMS ARE MY FAVORITE FRUIT. bring on the fall plums 😍
On the West Coast, in California, we have the Santa Rosa Plum that has a purplish - black peel and yellow flesh. It is sweet, but can have a sour overtone. Good for jellies. It was developed by Luther Burbank.
I am amazed at how many different fruits you have been able to find in NY. I search around for crazy fruits a ton and have not come close to the luck you have had.
If it is in a graft it will make almost double the size plum wise. Also it is eaten tart for best taste and you can even let them ripe even more and they become sweet.
Have you ever thought about going to Plant Nurseries to buy unusual fruit, I saw a chocolate vine in fruit at a local nursery here in the UK. So it can be expensive as you need to buy the plant too - but can be an interesting way of finding unusual fruit!
In 2012 I was staying in a neighborhood in fresh Meadows Queens NY. There was a plum tree in a yard that hangs over the sidewalk that I have to pass on my way out and in. It was summer and the tree was in full fruiting. Most of them would just fall on the sidewalk and splats. Man did I make good work of them fruits that summer, it was my first time having plums and I didn't know what they were, but they were one of the sweetest fruits I ever had. They were average size, red on the outside, yellow on the inside, soft and very juicy. I haven't been able to find this kind of plum ever since. I don't like any of the plums that I buy in the markets or supermarkets. I drove past the yard a year and a half ago and sadly they cut the tree down, what a loss.
Green gage's get bigger than that, and when properly ripe turn sort of golden-green and are very juicy, they don't keep very well once ripe. They were very common in sailor/fishing towns and there was a tree disease that swept thru the east coast during the 90/00's and virtually wiped out the green gage and damsen trees. Ours were the size of the black plum, and you could drown they were so juicy.
Thanks. I look forward to your videos. I just cut down a wild plum growing in yard. The plums were black, and very juice. They had a pit, the size of an olive pit with the fruit the size of a large olive. A smalll bush produced forty pounds of fruit, grows like a weed. I got tired of mowing around them, and was to laze to do something with them, so I cut it down. I have a few seeds, which I might grow out of the way of my mowing.
I grow plums in a small urban orchard in SE Georgia as a side gig. I could tell just by the way it looked that the big black plum wasn't going to be back good. It just had the look of one that was picked way too green and forced to turn a ripe color with Ethen.
I'd recommend trying two other varieties: Prunus insititia (Damson plums) Prunus cerasifera (Cherry plums) -- these plums look very similar to a cherry, in size, colour, and shape (mostly). Interesting flavour. I don't want to spoil it however. They come in different colours. One type of tree has purple foliage and the fruit is purple all throughout it's growth. The other is green when unripe, and red when ripe, with a different flavour and slightly different texture.
Growing up we had a plum tree in our yard. It would sometimes bear fruits, but they were always sour and kinda hard. I still loved eating them though, there's just something special about fruit grown in your own yard. :)
@weird explorer..fellow new yorker here, and frequenter of the farmer's markets you've mentioned in some recent videos. for orchard fruits, I'd highly recommend Treelicious orchards. they are at various markets throughout the week, but depending on the time of year, they're the folks to go to for a wide array of plums (this year i had green gage, mira belle, and a few other hard to find plums), but also some insane apple and crabapple varietals (dolgo and api etoile + more). basically, they kill it with the fruit. Oh, and please do more apple/local to the northeast videos!! we have such amazing fruit; and while its not crazy or exotic, the variety is just awesome
Plums are cool pretty cool. I haven't found a ripe green gage in the store yet, so we planted a tree. We also have numerous plum hybrids and some American plum crosses, too. Usually any plums that I get from the grocery store are pretty underripe (some are fairly horrible). I've had better success with the hybrids being ripe (ish) - pluots, apriums and my personal favorite pluerries. The pluerries are sweet, usually pretty firm and the texture is a little between the cherry and plum. Sometimes they're marketed as cherry plums. If you're lucky, you can get amazing plums and crosses from the farmers market at the right time of year. Have you tried mirabelles? I've never had the chance.
We used to have one red plumtree, a Victoria. We also used to have 2 damson but they died and then we had 10 yellow plum trees and no one knew what breed it was, and they were yellow, sweet, plummy, vanilla and honey flavour. Every one in the are had one at least of this yellow ones but we had 10 trees. We used to make pies and marmalade with these plums and the neighbour made wine.
I once picked a couple of bright red and close in size as the gageplum, and it was the sweetest plum I’ve ever tasted. I couldn’t ask the owner what variety it was because I didn’t ask permission to pick the plums, and so I’m still trying to find that same variety of plum, and it’s been over 5 years… I live in Florida so the weather is too hot for most plum varieties, except for a few so it narrows down my search quite a bit. May I ask if your aunt live(d) in a warmer state or country? (Fingers crossed)
@@nobull772 Did you try your local nurseries in the spring? They get fruit meant for your zone. Chickasaw plums and hog plums are most Southern wilds if they bought from state conservatory who sell cheap local natives. They come in red and orange. Just about any fruit you grow yourself will be the best as you get to pick it at its peak. The University of Florida breeding program released gulf series plums, if you look those up, gulf gold is said to be sweetest. Other plums for Northern Florida with red skin would be homeside- yellow flesh, producer- red flesh, roadside- red flesh, rosa, rubrum- red flesh, methely, robusto- yellow flesh, santa rosa- red flesh, and segundo- yellow flesh. You can buy fruit trees online, but my experience as a gardener, few people actually do. Most go to local plant nurseries. People might get pass-a-long plants though, a clone or offspring of a plant at a loved one's house to remember them by. That was how human favored plants traveled the world with us. As the plants intended. They want us to eat them, to carry their children away with us, to spread them to new homes. Next time you come across a fruit who's flavor you enjoy, plant it's seeds. Stone fruit seeds grown out grow more like copies of its parents.
We had two big plum trees in the courtyard where I grew up, I spent a lot of time climbing around in those, sitting at the top and eating plums till I got stomach ache. We also had red, white and blackcurrant bushes, a cherry tree, and a few raspberry, strawberry and wild strawberry plants and a few wild cherry trees close by too. Also many other kind of fruit within walking distance, like apples, pears, black mulberry and more. Man... good times! Haven't thought about that for a long time till now. Hadn't really realised how lucky it was to have all that, next summer is gonna be fruit summer, all from those trees!! (the ones that are still there, we'll see). I never knew what kind of plums they where, but they're certainly Prunus domestica based on this video, looks exactly the same!
Years ago I had a Greengage plum tree. Used to get an incredible amount of fruit from it, and the plums were so good. It lasted for about a decade until it got infested with black knot and slowly declined. BTW: "Big Ass Prunes" - great idea for a brand name.
It's a little late, but as a hobbyist fruit grower I'm pretty sure all of those except the gage was underripe. If you bought them from stores, that's probably why. The gage sounds ripe. A truly ripe plum can be drunk as much as it is eaten.
Jared, have you tried a Santa Rosa plum? "Named for its birthplace, this plum variety was bred in 1906 by the famed California horticulturist Luther Burbank in his Santa Rosa plant research center. Responsible for over 800 varieties of fruits and vegetables, most notably the russet potato, the Santa Rosa plum is considered the jewel in Burbank’s crown."--Frog Hollow Farm. I haven't had one in years, but I remember them as being one of the best fruits I've ever tasted. They should be tree-ripened and are very sweet with a complex flavor.
I may have been mistaken. I remember the plum I tried as larger, with red flesh and a tart skin, so it may have been a Black Splendor plum. "'Black Splendor’ plums live up to their name-they have a fantastic sweet taste. The skin of these sweet plums is dark violet, and the waxy coating gives them a smoky appearance. Biting into these delicious stone fruits reveals a dark burgundy flesh that covers the large pit in the middle. One of the beauties of 'Black Splendor' plums is that they are a large variety of plum that ripens early in the season. Hints of tartness from the black skin combined with the sweetness of the beet-colored flesh make these plums a variety to look for."--leafyplace.com
TheGloryofMusic. The Santa Rosa also can be gotten as a weeping variety for more decorative landscaping effect. I like best the old time Stanley plums dead ripe from the tree.
Greetings from Turkey 🇹🇷 In Turkey when you say plum the image in peoples mind would be green plum. But we have too many different plum and apricot species. If you search plum production scale in world you’ll see Turkey ranked sixth. For apricot ranked first. This times of year is the season of sour, unripe plums and apricots we love to eat them with salt!
farmers markets in northern California have dozens of varieties. I am aware of wild varieties here in north America. I would love to see you partner with foraging channels.
gages are preferably eaten unripe in greece. in more rural areas it is/was somewhat of a ritual for young children to 'steal' unripe gages from strangers' gardens. ripe ones are mostly used for making jam
I think Red plums are probably my favorite type of plum. They have a nice red interior when they're ripe so you know when you've cut into a ripe one, and the flavor has all of the notes of the lemon plum: it's stone-fruity, has hints of vanilla, is very sweet, and finishes with some sourness at the end. Also, this video has really great timing, I've been raiding a nearby European plum tree for the last month and dehydrating the bounty. At this point, I've probably gotten about 100 plums from this one tree and I'll have dried plums around to last me until persimmon season. I have visions of halved plums when I close my eyes and I'm fairly certain the smell of drying plums is still clinging on to various things around the house.
Thanks. Happy to learn that Greengage plums are rare and much in demand. I have one tree that gives 25 kgs of fruit. However they are much larger than the one you are showing and they are really sweet. I have ari-layered several stems to multiply this variety in Dehradun North India.
That's so weird. Never realized we had the Prunus Insititia growing in our back yard in Utah. All I remember is that the seeds were massive and you couldn't eat the fruit until it had already fallen off the tree. Too bitter otherwise.
I find salicina can have sweet flesh and sour skin. Domestica are more freestone, have a better skin flavor and overall lower acid; prunes particular cultivars with lower moisture and modest size so they dry before going bad and have a higher net prune yield. Gages are named after a dude named Gage, the original Green Gage is hard to find because it is not a reliable tree, low inconsistent yields and such. My two favorite uses for plums(other than raw eating) are: 1.powidl (povidle ?) which is sort of half way between jam and fruit leather not quite as firm as fruit cheese. basically chop up some plums[prune types work best] heat in a pot with some spices like cinnimon cloves nutmeg ginger whatever you like, and cook it down real thick just barely spreadable when cooled, store in a jar. 2. Plum cobbler/deep dish pie(only a top crust), the filling is 2 pounds of plum halves 1/2 cup brown sugar(more if plums are tart), 1tablespoon quick tapioca, 1/2tea salt, 1/2tea cinnamon, grated nutmeg(don't use pre-ground nutmeg, tastes like sawdust), mix and let stand half an hour or overnight, dump in the pan top with 2 tablespoons chopped butter, shake or press down, add topping of choice bake 50-70 minutes 350f. (depends on depth of pan, 70m is when I make a triple batch in an 11*15 pan) 8*8*2 square or 9" round(deep cake not shallow pie) should be about right for single batch. It will drip, have a catch.
The Greengage cultivar comes from the unripe plums you ate e194. While they are mostly eaten unripe in the middle east I've come across more or less ripe ones too. Since you bought your greengage at a Russian market i was wondering if you might have actually picked up some Georgian Alucha (Prunus vachuschtii), they are similarly green and there are some unripe cherry plums (Prunus cerasifera) which also look near identical. There is a big overlap of common names so unless you pick them from the tree or buy them from someone who is very certain I guess it can be hard to distinguish. I haven't tried Alucha except for in tkemali (which is made from a variety of different plums, but I think traditionally Alucha is used for the green one), but since your greengale was sweet I guess it was indeed a greengale. Any Georgian in the comments feel free to correct me! You should def make a tkemali as a "plum ketchup"-episode as it is often described. It doesn't really taste like ketchup at all, but is similarly a savory condiment made from a fruit with some overlap in spices.
In France, they have a plum they call Mirabelle, the scientific name is prunus domestica, syriaca. Not sure what the difference is but they were pretty sweet and orange
ooh I think you should try the American plum, Prunus americana! It has a red-purple skin when ripe with yellow flesh. The skin is slightly astringent and the flesh is sweet. I picked some for the first time this year and loved them!
Plums are delicious, but I've never had a good one from a store. Rarely see them in farmers markets, I think they're not popular enough. I had a damson plum tree once that gave amazing fruit, both taste and amount.
Review Sinopodophyllum hexandrum if you get a chance! The plant contains neurotoxin, but the fruit is edible when it's ripe. When I was young, we had just a few of those plants in our garden and got 2-4 fruit per year. The fruit is very sweet, comparable to a persimmon! I've heard that if a dog or a small child ate the plant or raw fruit it could be fatal, so even tho it can be grown in my country, it's not common because of the danger.
I don’t know about the US and other places but in Canada you can find the small yellow plums in any supermarket during the summer. They’re just as common as the big purple plums
In New Zealand has greengage plums - but not very common. You can order them from orchards. They are like the best plums you can imagine - has the nectrine taste to it. I still have some jam in the fridge :)
the green gage is really common in Venezuela, didn't even know they were supposed to be rare. what we don't get as much are domestica and salicina, though they aren't rare either (well, with the crisis they are, but that's another topic). Edit: and forgot to mention, we also have many hybrids with the green gage, apart from it we have ones that are identical but yellow on the outside and like a firmer salicina inside but a bit less sweet and more tart, and ones that are like that but sweeter and more tart than the salicina.
I would think doing a side by side comparison of plum varieties to be problematic since with plums in particular the ripening schedule is very staggered with some ready in July and others almost to October.
My favourite plums are Omega and a wild Christmas Plum (I have no idea what they're actually called it was a random wild-grown tree that popped up at a house I was living at in New Zealand and they were small ripening in December hence me calling it a 'Christmas' Plum).
Wow check that lemon plum! It sure looks interesting. My favorite plum was "elephant heart" . Also we had a little plum called Potawatomi, very good, like a greengage. Those Stanley or prune plums are also good.
I will never forget my stolen plum. From a young age I've always preferred fruit to candy and I don't think I acquired a taste for candy because we could never afford treats like candy. All you have to do is pick fruit if you're hungry. fruit has always been there for me, but at 14 my mother left me. I wasn't in complete despair I had a job and my own apartment not long affter. But I've never been so broke and had no money to my name I was in a big city there was no Farms or Orchards I was very hungry. I don't even remember how long it had been since I ate I went to a small Market and pocketed a plum this was the most plummy plum sweet and juicy bursting with Plum flavor, not only did I feel bad that I had to take food I felt bad that it tasted so good.The plums that I've had are either hard or tasteless or Worse both and they never seem to ripen in a natural yummy way but this plum was different and ever since then I've been chasing that delicious plum but no matter how many farmers markets or grocery stores or hole in the Wall's I have never found a plum as Delicious and I think that was my curse for stealing. I know how delicious it can be but I can never have it again. I've yearned for that delicious plum to taste it again it's been 20 Plus years but I just can't Forget
I would also like to add that it was a black Plum from the United States we have a lot of bad fruit here not saying it's all bad but what's in our average grocery stores is it not very palatable
It would be interesting to see brix measurements on these to get a scientific level of sweetness. Greengage ranges from 20 to 30 brix from what I've seen online
