Everything you could ever want to know about growing, eating and cooking plums

2025 was an excellent season for plums — and that includes gages, damsons and mirabelles. Botanists have for a long time insisted that all the different types have developed from only one species, Prunus domestica, a native of Armenia and the neighbouring countries of western Asia — and modern DNA tests confirm this. Plums are large, soft-fleshed and can be treated as cookers or eaters. Gages are small, round and sweet. Damsons are especially hardy and have a spicy, tart flavour, excellent when cooked or jammed. Mirabelles are best thought of as very small gages.

The differences between the groups are the result of centuries of selection in different areas, at different times and for different purposes. They are a monument to our ancestors’ tenacity and good taste over many centuries. Ignore those thick-skinned plums from China that you see in supermarkets and taste of nothing. They are cultivars of Prunus salicina — I have no use for them, either raw or cooked.

Most Brits don’t think beyond ‘Victoria’, an English variety that foreigners regard as insipid. ‘Bland and boring’ was the verdict of our own English super-cook Jane Grigson. ‘Victoria’ is valued because it’s a regular cropper and, usually, abundant. I grow it only because we inherited it with the house. It suffers from bacterial canker, brown rot, plum moth and silver leaf and, if I were sensible, I would cut the tree down, but I can’t do so now because I have run a climbing rose up it.

‘Merryweather Damson’ is by far the best and largest of the damsons. In glut years, we make damson jam and sometimes damson gin, following a recipe for sloe gin, but using the same weight of damsons instead. My daughter makes delicious damson cheese, like the membrillo that Spaniards make from quinces. We were told that ‘Farleigh Damson’ had a better flavour than ‘Merryweather’, but the crops were small and so were the fruit — rather high up on the tree. After a while, we no longer bothered to pick them.

There will be readers of Country Life who value ‘Farleigh Damson’ for its regular, heavy cropping. All I can say is that our experience was different. Skip the other damsons you sometimes see for sale — they are seldom worth growing.

Greengages are a race apart — at peak season they are the sweetest and most delicious of all plums. Their original name is ‘Reine Claude’, in honour of Duchess Claude of Brittany, the long-suffering wife of François I of France. The English name — green-gages — commemorates Sir William Gage, an English Catholic who sent trees back from France to Hengrave, his estate in Suffolk. Almost all gages are delicious except ‘Reine Claude d’Ouillins’, which is valued for its late flowering that means it is less likely to be caught by frost. Its fruits are much larger, but this comes at the expense of taste. Most are sold to commercial jam-makers.

I have several times made jam from greengages and mirabelles, but the fruit is usually too sweet and short on acidity, so their jam is rather bland unless the fruit is picked early. Both are ‘freestone’, so I take out the stones before freezing or jamming them — it’s rather a fiddly job with mirabelles.

The best plum jam comes from quetsches, widely grown in much of Europe for their superb taste — rich, fruity and sharp — and best of all is ‘Quetsche d’Alsace’, unbeatable for its strong flavour. It’s a copious and regular cropper, so our son brings us boxfuls of it from his garden in Normandy at the end of the summer holidays. Some we freeze for tarts and clafoutis through the winter.

Plum trees flower before pears and apples, so they are more susceptible to frost damage. You can mitigate this by choosing late-flowering cultivars such as ‘Blue Tit’ and ‘Pershore Purple’. Most plum trees are self-pollinating, others are partly self-fertile, and a few — very few — are self-incompatible cultivars. Plant several varieties together and you will have no problems.

My experience is that, whatever problems with frost they may or may not encounter, our trees always produce much more than we can cope with. Overcropping also brings broken branches. The perfectionist’s solution is to thin the crop in June, but most of us have more important things to do in early summer.

All plum trees are easy to grow and require little maintenance, but they do need a warm, sunny spot with fertile soil that doesn’t get waterlogged. Ripening is not a worry in the south of England, but plums grow better in Kent than in Cumberland. Northerners might do better to choose hardy, early-fruiting varieties such as ‘Early Rivers’ (also called ‘Early Prolific’) and ‘Opal’. They respond well to manuring, but I do nothing more than throw them a handful of the 20-10-10 fertiliser mix (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium) that I also use for the rose beds.

Nurserymen like to graft plum trees on semi-dwarfing rootstocks — ‘Pixy’ is good for fan-training them against a wall, but the rather more vigorous ‘St Julien’ is more widely used in Britain. Rootstocks curb the natural vigour of the trees, but need rich, moist soil to show their capabilities. I have always gardened on thin soils — sand or chalk — so I prefer them on their own roots and find that no restraint is needed. Then they sucker in a useful way; I cut off the suckers and give them away so they grow up to become new trees.

Five of the best

‘Cambridge Gage’

The most delicious of all dessert plums. It needs shelter, warmth and, if possible, a pollinator, but nothing beats the sweet, juicy richness of its flavour. Late to ripen, but freestone

‘Czar’

Forget ‘Victoria’, plump for ‘Czar’. Tough, hardy, early to ripen, self-fertile and a regular, reliable producer. A rich mixture of bitterness and sweetness. Good for jamming

‘Merryweather Damson’

Largest and easiest to handle of all damsons. The amazingly rich flavour comes through when cooked, jammed or steeped in gin

‘Quetsche d’Alsace’

The archetypal European plum, with a strong, rich flavour. Late to ripen, not too juicy, perfect for tarts and jams, but also delicious as a dessert plum when the season is coming to an end

‘Warwickshire Drooper’

Dependable, late-season plum with a semi-weeping habit that makes for easy picking. Large, yellow and sweet—excellent dessert, but also good as a cooker

How does one choose the best variety? Plant several, and forget disease-ridden ‘Victorias’ — try healthy ‘Avalon’ or ‘Haganta’ instead or ‘Jubilaeum’ (sometimes called ‘Jubilee’ in England). I have grown more than 20 cultivars over the years and tasted many more. For eating fresh, I recommend ‘Opal’, ‘Jefferson’, ‘Marjorie’s Seedling’ and almost any gage. Good varieties for cooking, freezing and jamming include ‘Purple Pershore’, ‘Czar’ and ‘Quetsche d’Alsace’.

Remember, however, there is no plum that you cannot eat raw and none that cannot be cooked. As with most tree-fruit, plums become sweeter and less acid as they ripen, so that a ‘cooker’ evolves and eventually becomes an ‘eater’. This is particularly noticeable in a hot summer in southern England, when plums attain the rich flavours you find in French markets.

That said, our island is still full of rare local varieties. The National Collection at Brogdale in Kent has more than 330 different plums to taste — imagine choosing the best by eating one’s way through all of them. One such, known as the Denbigh plum, now has PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) status. It is, however, little known outside the Vale of Clwyd in Wales.

Beware the advice of know-all experts who copy what earlier generations have written. I am a great fan of ‘Pond’s Seedling’, the fruit of which is usually described as dull or poorly flavoured. That is not my experience, but people pass on the judgement without ever tasting them themselves — and, suddenly, the rest of us find that it is no longer sold. I leave ‘Pond’s Seedling’ plums until they are fully ripe, peel them to reveal the fragrant flesh, bring out our Victorian silver fruit knives with mother-of-pearl handles bearing the family crest and eat them as pudding. It is one of the last treats of summer, before the rains of autumn send us scurrying to pick the rest of the crop.

This article first appeared in the September 24 issue of Country Life. For more information on how to subscribe, click here.