Help me grow a greengage tree!

April 27, 2007 1:20 PM

I want to grow a greengage tree. Advice?

I live in San Francisco, and while I haven't looked, I'd guess it's more or less impossible to BUY such a tree, considering the fruits themselves are unavailable in markets. But, my mother is mailing me a box of greengages and I'm wondering if I can grow one.
The problem is that I have no experience planting a tree from fruit. What do I do? Do I just bury one of the fruits in the ground and hope for the best? Or should I pot it? Or what? Please spell it out for me because I am a gardening dummy. Thanks!

posted by BuddhaInABucket to Home & Garden (3 answers total)

The problem with growing stone fruits from seeds is that they often aren't true to type. In dummy terms, that means that the tree that grows from the pit you spit won't necessarily produce the same fruit you just ate.

Your best bet is to find a seedling online, which probably will have been grafted onto guaranteed rootstock.

Still worth a try, though. Plums grow well in California, although in SF it's all about your microclimate.

Some good info here on how to grow plums from pits. You have to trick the pit into thinking it's gone through a dormant period by chilling it for a while, so don't stick it right in the ground.
posted by mudpuppie at 1:35 PM on April 27, 2007

Trees available online here.
posted by mudpuppie at 1:38 PM on April 27, 2007

Here is another nursery that has Greengage and other sweet plum trees available. The stock that I have gotten from them has been very reliable.
posted by jadepearl at 2:02 PM on April 27, 2007