Plum in ORMUS
In 1983 when I moved into my current
house, we planted a plum tree seedling in the front yard. This seedling was originally growing near a
couple of similar young plum trees in my neighbor’s yard directly to the south of my house. All of these
trees produced similar plums each year. They were the same size, ripened at the same time and tasted the
same.
In the spring of 2005, I began putting sea
water ORMUS precipitate from Sea-Crop.com on my plum tree. At the
end of the first season (on October 7, 2005) I took pictures of two typical plums
from my tree. I also picked a couple of plums from the plum trees in my neighbor's yard. These trees are
about fifty feet from my tree but they are the same type of plum tree (Italian Prune
Plums).
The two plums from my neighbor’s tree
weighed 35 grams while the two from my tree weighed 61 grams.
On August 16th 2006I noticed that the plums on my tree seemed
to be full size and were starting to darken so I picked a couple of them and a couple from my neighbor’s
trees for comparison. I realize that it was almost two months earlier in the season than when I picked
the plums in 2005. This is probably why the two plums from my neighbor’s tree only weighed 24.7
grams.
I had to check out the plums from my tree
because they looked so big. I weighed them and they weighed 129 grams. This was more than twice the
weight of 2005’s plums from my tree and 3.7 times the weight of 2005’s plums from my neighbor’s tree. It
was also 5.2 times the weight of my neighbor’s 2006 plums but they had not reached full size yet while
the ones on my tree were much closer to full size.
In 2005 I wanted to have some way to take
a picture that would show the size of the plums compared to an object that most people are familiar with
so I took the picture with a couple of golf balls next to the plums. In 2006 I included the golf balls
and matched their sizes so that the orange golf ball overlapped the orange golf ball in the 2005 photo.
You can see the result at:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/plumcomparison02.jpg
A higher resolution version of this same
picture is at:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/plumcomparison01.jpg
In 2007 a late spring frost nailed all of
the plum trees and only a few plums survived. Not enough for a good comparison or
pictures.
2008’s plum harvest was great but I did
not document it very well. Here is a comparison picture from August 26:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/08-08-26-Plum5.jpg
On that same day, city workers came by to
trim my tree so that it would not overhang so far into the street. I talked them into letting me take one
last picture before they trimmed it back:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/08-08-26-Plum1-s.jpg
Here is what it looked like immediately
after it was trimmed:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/08-08-26-Plum2-s.jpg
I continued to apply a cup of the Sea-Crop
ORMUS to this tree each year after harvest.
In mid June of 2009 I noticed an
incredible abundance of mushrooms under my plum tree:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-06-16-mushrooms01.jpg
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-06-22-Mushrooms01.jpg
I saw this as an indication that the
mycorrhizal fungi in the soil were quite active in providing nutrients to the roots of my plum tree. This
inspired me to do a more thorough documentation of the results for 2009. On July 26 I did the following
comparison of plums that had fallen to the ground around my tree and my neighbor’s
trees:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-07-26-Plums01.jpg
On August 4 I took the picture
below:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-08-04-plums01.jpg
andon August 18 I took the following
comparison picture:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-08-18-Plums01.jpg
The August 18 picture above also included
a couple of plums from a plum tree on a rental property that is a couple blocks away:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-07-26-Rental-Plum01.jpg
Those plums are a bit larger than my near
neighbor’s plums and are on the far left of the picture above.
My plum tree started having ripe and
edible plums in early September of 2009. These plums were the best I have ever tasted. They were sweet
and "smooth". On September 12 I took some more comparison pictures of the plums on my tree and my
neighbor's trees which did not get ORMUS. My tree is about fifty feet away from my neighbor's plum trees
and both are the same type of plum.
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-09-12-Plums01.jpg
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-09-12-Plums02.jpg
Though my plums were ripe, I estimated
that my neighbor's plums were still two weeks away from being ripe.
I was kinda
pushed into documenting the plums from my tree because a couple of people had stopped and asked me if
they could pick some of these plums. Six neighborhood children between the ages of six and nine also
started picking plums on the 12th. Here is a picture of three of them
picking:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-09-12-Kids01.jpg
I did not even try to keep them
away.
One of the adults who asked to pick was an
old friend who picked the plums in the buckets illustrated below:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-09-13-Plums01.jpg
I asked him to leave half the plums for
another friend to pick but the other friend only picked one bucket. Four days later the first friend
picked more plums from my tree. I took a second picture of the plums he picked:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-09-17-Plums02.jpg
These two pictures probably represent
about three quarters of the plums on this tree. Notice that I threw in a golf ball or two so you can see
that they are all quite large.
I asked him to pick some of the largest
plums from the top layer of these buckets and he grabbed three. The largest of these is in the following
picture which compares its size and weight to three plums I picked on the same day from my neighbor's
tree (which is 50 feet from mine):
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-09-17-Plums01.jpg
My neighbor's plums still weren't
ripe.
Several people asked if there were any
other factors that might account for the greater size and abundance of plums on my tree. They asked if I
was giving my tree more water or any other fertilizer. I did not use any fertilizer on my tree. I don’t
think my neighbor did either. To illustrate how much water my tree got I took some pictures. Notice the
dried grass under my tree?
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-09-12-Grass01.jpg
This is evidence that I did not water my
tree as much as my neighbors watered theirs as you can see at:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-09-12-Grass02.jpg
I also found some plums at the Baker Food
Coop from an orchard nearby in Richland, Oregon. Richlandis 1200 feet lower elevation
than BakerCityand usually supports the growth of fruits
that don't do as well here. For comparison, I put together another picture of one plum I picked from my
tree and two of the plums from Richland:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-09-16-Plums01.jpg
Notice that my single plum weighs more
than the two plums from the professional organic grower in Richland.
On September 28, my near neighbor’s trees
finally were starting to get a few ripe plums. Here is a picture of a couple of the largest of these
plums with weight:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-09-28-Plums01.jpg
The plums on the tree at the rental house
were also just starting to ripen as you can see at:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-09-28-Plums02.jpg
On October 1, 2009the weather started getting much cooler.
Instead of 70-80 degrees during the day, we were getting 50-60 degree days. We had a couple of freezing
nights in the week following. On October third we even got a bit of snow, but it did not stick. This
probably slowed down the ripening of the plums on my neighbor’s tree and the tree at my rental
house.
In the first picture linked in this
article:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/plumcomparison02.jpg
I took my first pictures of plums from my
tree on October 7, 2005. So I decided to wait till
October 7, 2009to take more pictures of my neighbor’s
plums and the plums at my rental house. Since the only plums I still had from my tree had been dried or
made into jam:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-09-27-Preserved-Plums.jpg
I could not make a timely comparison to my
plums. Consequently, here are two pictures, one of my neighbor’s plums and the other of the plums from my
rental house. (I picked the largest plums I could find for comparison in each
instance):
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-10-07-Plums01.jpg
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-10-07-Plums02.jpg
Remember that these plums were picked 28
days (four weeks) after the first ripe plums from my tree were picked.
I finally got pictures of some totally
ripe plums from my neighbor’s trees and my rental tree on October 13 and 14. These pictures can be seen
at:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-10-13-Plums01.jpg
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-10-14-Plums01.jpg
On October 8 I also took a comparison
picture of the seeds from all three trees:
http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/2009-10-08-Plum-Seeds01.jpg
As you can see from the illustrations and
measurements above, the Italian Prune Plums on my tree (which were given about a cup of Sea-Crop ORMUS
once per year after harvest) are typically about twice the size of other Italian Prune Plums
in Eastern Oregon, when ripe. They also ripen two to four
weeks earlier than other Italian Prune Plum trees in my neighborhood. Most people who tasted them have
also commented on their extra sweetness and smoothness. They are not as tart as other
plums.
