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Victoria plum tree

Prunus domestica 'Victoria'

Victoria
Victoria has received the RHS Award of Garden MeritVictoria is listed in the RHS Plants for Pollinators
  • Gardening skill: Beginner
  • Picking season: Mid Late August
  • Self-fertility: Self-fertile
  • Pollination group: 3

Victoria is by far the most popular plum variety in the UK, dating from the Victorian era, and well-known for heavy crops of very attractive plum-colored fruit.

Victoria really excels as a culinary plum. It cooks to a distinctive pink/orange puree which makes a very good jam and a good-flavored filling for pies. The stone is semi-clinging, and fairly easy to remove from the flesh. The flavor has a good sweet/sharp balance, and there is often a note of almond in the background which is a characteristic of Victoria.

The plums will ripen over a period of several weeks and if you want to eat them rather than cook with them, leave the plums on the tree until they are fully ripe - the skins will start to become a darker red /purple rather than the more usual orange flushed color.

Victoria european plums for sale

  • Full-size 1-year bare-root tree $37.95
    Mature height: 16ft-24ft after 10 years
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How to grow

Victoria produces a lot of pollen and is a useful pollinator of other mid-season flowering plum varieties. The blossom is also more frost-resistant than that of many other plums.

Left un-trained, most plum trees will grow into a standard tree-shape - but this is not the best structure for supporting the heavy crops which Victoria is capable of. A Victoria plum with a branch broken under the weight of fruit is an all too-common sight - and of course broken branches are ideal entry points for the fungal diseases to which Victoria is susceptible. This problem can be avoided by encouraging the young tree to grow as a shorter-stemmed bush with wide-spreading branches and the central leader retained. Thinning the fruitlets during May will also help, and the remaining plums will be larger and have a more concentrated flavor.

Even if you thin the fruitlets Victoria is invariably a very heavy-cropping tree, in fact probably the heaviest-cropping of all European plums.

Advice on fruit tree pollination.

History

Victoria was found growing in a garden in southern England in the early 1800s, and introduced for sale in the 1840s by Denyer, a nurseryman from Brixton in south London. Its parentage is not known.

Victoria characteristics

  • Gardening skillBeginner
  • Self-fertilitySelf-fertile
  • Pollination group3
  • Pollinating othersGood
  • Picking seasonMid - Late August
  • UsesEating freshCulinaryDual purpose
  • Keeping (of fruit)1 week
  • General resistancePoor
  • Summer maximum temperaturesCool ( 20-24C / 68-75F)Warm (25-30C / 76-85F)Cold (< 20C / 67F)
  • Country of originUnited Kingdom
  • Period of origin1800 - 1849
  • Fruit colorRed