Mixed Source

Early Golden Japanese Plum Bareroot

2025 Staff Favourite

Early Golden Japanese plums are Jill's favourite this year! Jill has this to say: “The flavour reminds me of a peach, making it plum delicious and me peachy keen about it!”

All Staff Favourites are 20% off. The Staff Favourite Discount cannot be combined with other quantity discounts.

History: Early Golden originated in Fonthill, Ontario where it was discovered as a chance seedling. It has since become the most popular yellow plum in Ontario. Despite its Canadian origin, this is actually a Japanese plum. 

Why We Grow It: Early Golden is a very popular Japanese freestone plum. The medium-sized fruit is very sweet with tangy yellow skin that gets a cheery red blush where the sun hits it. Medium-sized. The tree is vigorous and has a low susceptibility to black knot, although it requires careful thinning or else it will tend to bear crops every other year.

      $68.00 $54.40
      Rootstock:
      Size

      17 in stock

      Fruit Traits:

      Recommended Use: Fresh eating

      Fruit Size: Medium-small

      Storage: Keeps about a week in the fridge.

      Harvest: August - Early

      Tree Traits:

      Canadian Hardiness Zone: 5

      Soil Preferance: Sandy loam and loam, like plenty or organic material. Prefers average to moist conditions with well-drained soils, avoid planting anywhere that floods for more than two weeks in the spring.

      Flowering Time: Early

      Bloom Colour: White

      Pollination Requirements: Requires a pollinator of a different Japanese plum variety that blooms around the same time

      Sun/Shade Requirements: Full sun (approx. 8-10 hours of sun daily)

      General Growth Habit: Very vigorous with an upright and spreading growth pattern, tends to bear fruit every other year but produces heavy crops when it does. Somewhat susceptible to black knot.

      Black Knot Resistance: Unknown/not particularly resistant or susceptible

      Overall Disease Resistance Rating*:

      *this rating is combined with our experience growing in our test orchards combined with already available information on the cultivar.

      Shipping: Every year we ship thousands of plants across Canada. We carefully bag roots in damp sawdust, then box them and send them out via courier. CLICK HERE to see our shipping policy.

      Pick-up: We also have thousands of trees picked up from our nursery each year. The pick-up options is free, though you must wait until you have been emailed a confirmation that your order is ready to pick up, which will have further information such as hours, locations, etc.

      Our grafted fruit trees are graded into two categories, and the size includes the rootstock:

      • 50-80cm grade: Smaller trees that may have some minor branching, this grade is like a "b-grade" size tree according to industry standards. This size may include trees that are over 1m but have some scarring or mild crookedness.
      • 1m+ grade: Trees that are over 1m tall, some may have no branches and others may have light feathering or a few established branches 

      Please keep in mind, bareroot trees appear small if you are unfamiliar with them. Size can vary year to year due to weather conditions and every single variety has a unique amount of vigour (some varieties naturally are smaller and some bigger, much like humans -and when you propagate hundreds of varieties, there certainly is variation). While we remain competitive in our plant size, it's also worth noting we don't use synthetic chemicals to push vegetative growth. Therefore you may find some conventional nursery stock larger in comparison. 


      Why plant small? It's best to transplant a tree when it's young so it can establish its roots before it has a lot of vegetative growth. This is much less stressful on it and after a few years bareroot trees tend to catch up and even surpass larger potted trees planted at the same time.

      Orders that are cancelled last minute due to size (being "too small"), will still incur the applicable cancellation fees if the trees are true to our grading standards as per the agreement of sale when the order was placed.

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