Foraging - Greengages

[Farmer_Gyles]

I saw some greengages in sainsburys a couple of weeks ago ....

Today we saw some "green plums" .... same size, colour, shape as the greengages .... but are they greengages???
Is it likely that other varieties of "plums" will all have changed colour by now? Is it only greengages that will be a uniform green colour all over?

Are there any distinctive features to look out for that will confirm if they're greengages?

We'll be going back there in the next week or so ....

[orangepippin]

The green gages in Sainsburys are a variety called Reine Claude de Bavay, which is grown commerically in France. English green gages such as Cambridge Gage are very similar. Green gages are usually quite small and round, whereas many plums are slightly elongated or egg-shaped and often a bit bigger than green gages. It would be fairly unusual to find a green gage tree in the UK (outside of a garden), although Surrey would probably have the right kind of climate and you might find some in old orchards.

[yummersetter]

My gages went yellowish a couple of weeks ago, just before some bird or animal looted them. The only green plums I have still are very late cookers

[Llamas]

What shape were the seeds? You can -ish tell what sort of plum a plum is by looking at the pits. Gages are tear-drop shaped, and usually fat with fairly even sides (one edge will be smooth, the other will have a 'suture' or a pair of ridges like a clam shell coming together).

Think I've got that right, perhapse a real plum guru will come along and clarify further.

[Llamas]

Interestingly, IF you've got room and are paitent, greengages come reasonably true from seed. If you store it over winter (let it get nice and chilled) and plant in the spring, you'd have pretty decent chance of getting an edible new greengage tree. It will be slightly different or it might be very different, but unlike apples, the odds of sowing gages from seed and get a good tree are much better.

I've been told that gages used to be grown from seed, each tree being similiar but slightly different and this helped with their pollination. When gages started being propagated by colonal budding and grafting, this (along with a particular sorting event which occured at Brogdale- an oversimplifying of greengage varities exercise which was then incorporated into the national collection) resulted in a signifigant reduction in the availability of compatable (gages love gages) but diverse cross-pollination possibilities. So, sometimes greengages get a reputation for being tricky croppers when the don't deserve it.

[orangepippin]

What shape were the seeds? You can -ish tell what sort of plum a plum is by looking at the pits. Gages are tear-drop shaped, and usually fat with fairly even sides (one edge will be smooth, the other will have a 'suture' or a pair of ridges like a clam shell coming together).

Think I've got that right, perhapse a real plum guru will come along and clarify further.

I didn't know this, but I am excited to check it out! It will be interesting to see how Denniston's Superb rates using this method, since the fruit is definitely gage-like but the tree grows more like a plum.

[Farmer_Gyles]

thanks for the info guys .... i'll get back to the spot again soon ....
i'll definitely cut one open to see the shape of the seeds etc ....
if they are green ones for cooking, is now about the right time to pick?

[orangepippin]

The best way to tell if a plum is ripe is simply to pick it and see if it tastes sweet. The flesh will also go from hard to yielding as it ripens. For cooking it sometimes helps if you pick when slightly under-ripe, to give you a bit of extra acidity.

[Llamas]

I got this from attending a Plum ID day run by Suffolk Traditional Orchard Group. Plums can be tricky, as they've has some hasty unplanned plum lovin between groups. First there were the sloe Prunus spinosa and the cherry plum Prunus cerasifera (which is completly different from a mirabelle, and FYI, Myrobalan is a bad word ;P), then they made the basis for the 'plum' plums or Prunus x domestica. Then everything started breeding with everything else, the gages, prunes (very pointy, thinner stones. Aka Zwetsche prunes), bullaces and damsons formed and got chucked in; the american plums, the japanese plums and more recently, apricots have been thrown into the mix.

This is the generally accepted theory of how it all happened as regurgatated from the ID day I attended. Pears are even more of a nightmare. Apple experts abound but there is a real shortage of pear pros.

[yummersetter]

I can't think of any cooking plums that are ready when green, they're usually red or purple with a couple of yellow ones like Pershore. Are they growing wild?

[bearded bloke]

Hedgerows in Kent & Surrey abound with mirabelle,which start green & mature to yellow.

[Farmer_Gyles]

Hedgerows in Kent & Surrey abound with mirabelle,which start green & mature to yellow.

sadly not much near me .... i'll have to go much further afield .... and i could end up with a day trip out and still come back with little more than a couple of pounds of blackberries .... i'll need a lot of trips out in spring to find good spots for next year ....

[snohare]

Apple experts abound but there is a real shortage of pear pros.

I knew it - this country is just not well enough pre-peared for an up-to-date fruit industry !
I gather from this that asking what that yellow-fruited tree down the street is, is not likely to be of much use. Oh well...I will just have to keep on "midnight cropping"...

[chris]

sadly not much near me .... i'll have to go much further afield .... and i could end up with a day trip out and still come back with little more than a couple of pounds of blackberries .... i'll need a lot of trips out in spring to find good spots for next year ....

You see, the problem is when you do find such a goldmine (I did find one once, which was awesome, but soon bulldozed down for houses ), you tend to keep it yo yourself. Most people don't want others stripping their foraging areas bare, which is understandable, as by nature people are greedy.

My wife and I were out picking blackberries locally, and after had had a decent amount she told me to stop and leave some for other people. Which was a nice surprise to hear, as she's only really just getting into the whole GYO/foraging side of things

I did start to write a website for people to have public and private profiles to share foraging grounds, i.e. taking the idea from TS about creating custom maps - and therefore allowing people to share this info, or a subset - I soon realised though, that people wouldn't really want to share their own goldmines publicly as you'd get people just coming on and looking where to go and then stripping the area bare.