Ladies and Gentlemen, Stanley is In. The. House.
Stanley Plum, that is.
(applause)
Thank you. Thank you very much!
Naturally sweet, Stanleys are also called 'prune plums' because, well, you guessed it. When dried, they become tasty prunes.
I've never gotten that far with our Stanleys. We eat 'em up fresh, and maybe I'll make a batch or two of preserves.
Why am I so excited about the plums? Because growing them these past few years has been a tale of woe. This is the first crop from one of several new trees that we've planted since our tried and true Stanley trees fell victim to Black Knot fungus around 12 years ago.
Our original Stanley plum trees were propagated by Arpod Kiss, himself a transplant from Hungary. Arpod was a fantastic horticulturist who could grow anything. He started our trees with cuttings from his own plum trees.
When we got our first crop, we fell in love with the plums. So did all of our friends. When the trees up and died, a sadness fell over the orchard. It's been a struggle since then to establish Stanley plum trees. When this tree finally made a crop we thought we had finally nipped the problem in the bud (so to speak), but we were wrong.
Jim found the beginnings of our arch enemy, Black Knot, on one of the branches. He amputated the diseased area and burned it. We are hoping that the operation took care of the problem. Only time will tell. But for now, FINALLY, we get to gorge ourselves with sweet plums.
Marcheta *plum excited
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