Early- vs. mid- vs. Late- season plums

[Gman]

I have a question about early vs late (and mid-season fruit cultivars.

I like the idea of being able to plant all 3 seasons of plum so that I have fresh fruit for longer. However, living in Scotland (albeit in Dundee where apparently we have more hours of sunlight than most other places) we are liable to have late frosts, a shorter growing season, less intense sunlight and less warmth than further south. I already have something really early (maybe rivers early prolific?) then a gap of a couple of weeks, then Victoria appears.

Intuitively I would have that it would be better to use early season fruits because they’s Have time to ripen and thought about aiming for gap between my other plums, but when I read reviews, some of these (eg plum opal) say that because of their short growing season, they need a lot of early sun and warmth for their flavour to develop properly.

Late season fruit may taste good but obviously with our short growing season I presumed may just not ripen at all which would be worse. I tried to look up local varieties thinking they might help and found a couple of Scottish plums (Gordon castle and guthrie’s late green) but both are late season so now not sure whether I am underestimating the ability of our meagre summers to ripen late varieties or whether these were traditionally grown on south facing walls (which I don’t have). Also these two varieties do not seem to be so easily available as many other late varieties (eg. Warwickshire Drooper, various gages) so wondered if maybe this was because they tasted bad, cropped poorly or were super susceptible to disease.

So in summary, I suppose my question is: in my situation with a space for 1 free-standing tree in full sun, pretty sheltered from wind, looking for an eating plum to complement what I already have, would you go earlyish, mid- or late-season and would you recommend any particular variety? And if you can give me any advice around early- vs late- in mediocre Scottish summers as a bonus, that’d Be great.

Cheers

[nickdub]

Plums vary a lot in many ways - so for example some are much more fussy than others and need almost ideal conditions to produce anything like a worthwhile crop, then there are considerations of pollination etc

Given your situation as you describe it, I'd go for something which is generally reliable, so will produce a decent crop of reasonable quality most years - there are a few varieties of this type, Marjorie's Seedling would be my suggestion.

[Brack]

Opal is a Swedish cultivar and does well in colder climates. It was recommended for my north East England climate, I'd have thought a gage or something wouldn't do much up where you are.
One thing I read about opal was that it crops so heavily then can struggle to ripen all the fruit properly. Perhaps a good thinning might produce a smaller quantity of better tasting fruit? You get enough sunshine up there.
Not sure about any more local heritage varieties, but if you already have two trees producing it'd be interesting to throw something a little bit different into the mix in terms of flavour.