How to Plant Satsuma Plum Tree

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Charles Boning, author of Florida's Best Fruiting Plants. We're at Jene's Tropicals. I'm here to talk to you just briefly about how to plant a Satsuma Plum Tree. Now, Satsumas are Japanese plums, which is different from European plums. And most Japanese plums are actually very good for making making prunes, and and very good for baking, and some of them are quite tart, but the Satsuma has an excellent flavor. This is a mid-season plum. It's got bright red, bright red skin and deep red flesh. It's one of the very best tasting plums out there, and they're very easy to grow. They're very popular in California. The main thing to know about Satsumas is that they require very few chilling hours. They only require about three hundred chilling hours; whereas, many of the other plums require upwards of six hundred chilling hours. Therefore, they can be grown in Southern California, in Flor areas of Florida, and in other more southern climes. They can be, in fact they can be grown throughout the southeast. Satsuma Plums are very vigorous. They require very aggressive pruning during the winter, but other than that they grow just the same as other plums. They're generally started from bare root plantings. They should be very lightly fertilized, and you should wait at least three months or four months after they start to break bud before you fertilize a newly planted specimen. Satsumas are not self fruitful, which means that they require cross-fertilization or cross-pollination from some other cultivar or some other species of plum. Therefore, it's critical that they be planted in close proximity with other species or other cultivars in order to maintain fruit set. I'm Charles Boning, and that's how to maintain a Satsuma Plum."