Jefferson is a fairly large yellow gage, with juicy flesh and a good rich gage-like flavour. Jefferson ripens at the end of August / early September.
A useful feature of Jefferson is that the plums do not all ripen at once, and picking can take place over a period of about 10 days, making this a good plum variety for dessert use because you can pick a bowl-full each evening rather than having to deal with a glut.
If you can provide the right growing conditions Jefferson is one of the best of the yellow gages, offering good crops of sweet plums.
**All prices include delivery. We offer a discount on orders of multiple bare-root trees for delivery at the same time - this will be shown at the checkout.
Delivery period: Pot-grown trees can be delivered from September onwards. Bare-root trees can be delivered from mid-November onwards. Within those periods you can specify your preferred month of delivery during the checkout process. It is best to order as soon as you can to ensure items are reserved for you.
*Mature heights: Height shown is the approximate height of the tree when mature (after 5-10 years), not the height when supplied. See photos of trees as supplied. Actual mature heights may vary considerably dependent on your local conditions and training and pruning regime.
Stock availability: Items showing as 'sold out' will probably be available again next season. If you would like to reserve in advance use our enquiry form - this does not commit you to anything.
Jefferson is self-sterile and needs to be pollinated by another tree of a different variety nearby.
Our online pollination checker lists suitable pollination partners for this variety.
More advice about pollination.
Jefferson is very easy to grow. Cropping is very good by gage standards, and similar to many plums. The fruit is also larger than most gages.
There are two things to note when considering growing Jefferson. Firstly, it really benefits from being located on a south-facing wall, or free-standing in a sunny aspect. Secondly, although it does not over-crop to the extent that some other plum varieties do, it repays thinning of the fruitlets in May.
Disease resistance is good - the tree grows strongly and does not seem to suffer from the usual plum diseases. Jefferson is a fairly vigorous tree, and in the first few years can grow at a rapid rate - in good conditions the main shoots of a young tree can readily put on more than 1m of growth between April and June.
Jefferson is a self-sterile plum but it can be pollinated by most other common plum varieties including Opal, Oullin's Gage and Victoria.
Planting instructions.
Pruning instructions.
USA 1825. Sometimes known as Jefferson's Gage.
