any one know where i can buy a "transparent gage" plum tree

I have googled this without much luck- the only US based nursery that i could find that sells them was a nursery called southmeadow- but their feedback on this forum is absolutely atrocious. anyone by any chance know of a different US based nursery that sells them?

You can buy them from raintree nursery
RED

I have one from Raintree and it is fruiting this year for the first time, in its 5th year. None of my other gages (Bavays, Green, Purple, Moissac) are fruiting yet, and most of them are two years older than the Golden Transparent. So it looks like it may be relatively good in the early fruiting category.

Scott

Scott
How many different plums do you have? I assume you sell the excess fruit?
RED

Red, I have close to 50 plum varieties. They are all very closely planted and also some trees have 2 or more varieties on them so the total space they take up is about 50' of row. So thats like 4 full-sized trees. Since they are all ripening at different times I don't ever get a big amount of any one variety. It is also still a pretty young orchard so I am not sure how many fruits I will get. I expect I will be up to my ears in peaches this year since most of the trees are now fruiting heavily.

On my Gardenwab page I list eveything in my orchard:

https://auth.gardenweb.com/members/scottfsmith

Scott

Scott
I have only about 20-25 varieties, but since Raintree ran a special this spring (5 for$60) I bought 2 bundles of plums and 1 of Pluots. so I have about 40 trees. They range from 9 to 1 yr old. I am looking to buy about 10 more varities so I will have plums from July 1st until October. Do you have a Victoria? My 3 yr old has 1 plum on it this yr. I ran into some in England a few yrs ago and thought they were one of the finest plums I had ever tasted.. If you don't have any I reccommend it.
Sounds like you have your plums in a fairly small area, only 50' of row. That will take some pruning I have read this spring that if you summer prune you will get lots fewer sprouts. I am trying that this yr. I am somewhat crippled up and try to keep my trees as short as possible. NO Ladders!!!
RED

Red, I didn't get Victoria for reasons I can't remember now. I have about maxed out on plum varieties so it will have to wait for something else to fail. I added lots of Japanese hybrids this spring, since I was having a lot of trouble with diseases and pollination issues on my pure Japanese plums.

I am a very committed pruner: winter, spring, summer, fall -- every time is pruning time! There is no other way to grow trees closely. I use some battery-operated hedge trimmers in the summer to trim back new growth. I swing it over the tops so nothing ever grows high up -- it gets hedged off. I bought a nice orchard ladder but I have not pulled it out once in five years. In the winter and spring I do lots of thinning and balancing.

Scott

Scott
I checked out your gardenweb page. Quite an impressive collection. And most impressive is your use of limited space. I am blessed with plenty of space. Approx 3 acres plus both sides of a 500' drive. I am developing it slowly which allows me to buy new trees every yr. This is a lot of the enjoyment for me. I was curious, why do you have double stars by Hewes crab, ribston pippin, roxberry russett, winter pearmain &m wickson apples? Are they extra good? I have been looking at Roxberry, Pearmain and wickson crabs as a possibility next year. I had a white nectarine which was loaded with fruit and Brown rot wiped it all out. Got 1 nectarine from the entire crop. I have 4 peaches & a yellow nectarine next to it and do not have the problem with them. I am giving it 1 more year and then will remove it. Also curious about the elephantheart plum. I had read great reviews about its taste and was going to get 1 next spring. I see you 96'ed it. Why?
RED

Red, those **'d ones I particularly liked. There are others just as good but I have not had as many years tasting them to know they will be consistent; I hope to add several more **'s this year.

Many of the Japanese plums, in particular the ones popular in California, get too diseased in my climate. Shothole in particular is very bad on them. I have also had pollination problems with them (but, this year I got very good pollination, for the first time). I will probably eventually topwork them, and in fact I have half topworked my Elephant Heart already. Its the same idea as what you have in mind for your white nectarine: if a fruit is not working, get rid of it. I think it is good to not delay too long on that as well, because all diseases are transmissible and the one susceptible tree will be manufacturing tons of the bad stuff and infecting your more resistant trees.

Scott

Thanks, I am starting my wish list for next spring. I order from Raintree and have bought from Millers and Starks but have less luck with them. Any other good sources for plum trees?
RED

Sure: Adams County Nursery is excellent, as is Cummins. Other good places include Johnsons Nursery, One Green World, Fedco for northern plums, etc.

Scott

Another great nursery for antique varieties is Trees of Antiquity. I have bought from them and received excellent trees. They have some types others don't have. I also like Bay Laurel Nursery in California.

pajaritomt, I also like those two nurseries a lot, but would not recommend them for ordering plums for midwesterners. They sell California varieties which tend not to do well in the eastern US. Also Bay Laurel has no fridge so you will either get a partly leafed out tree or it will show up in February. I in fact originally bought most of my plums from Trees of Antiquity, but their Japanese ones are proving poor choices for my climate -- see my comments above.

Scott

I have a very nice green gage plum tree, but I don't remember where I bought it. I actually have used these nurseries for trees other than plums and assumed that if they were good for apples and crabapples they would be good from plums anywhere. Obviously not!

For apples and peaches they are generally very good. I just finished eating all my Gold Dust peaches, a tree I bought from Bay Laurel and which is not available anywhere in the east. It is an early peach that has the rich flavor of a late peach, and it doesn't seem to be too disease-prone. Some of the other California peaches are a little too disease-prone, but its minor compared to the plums. I have had pretty good luck with all of the California apples I bought, even Gravenstein which I was told would not work in my climate.

Scott