What I Do With Homegrown Plums (2024)

FAQs

Can I freeze plums? ›

Freezing plums

Wash and dry the plums gently, then cut them in half to remove the stones. From here you can freeze them whole or slice them first, which makes them easier to use. Lay out your plum slices on a baking tray and put them in the freezer.

Once your little plums ripen, in midsummer, they'll be edible, though probably fairly sour, depending on the particular cultivar you have. It's good that your tree is loaded, because you'll be in competition with the local birds, which also like them.

As most people are aware, plums make wonderful preserves, they are also one of the best stewed fruit, and are wonderful in crumbles and cakes. But I've also tried, and linked to below, a few more unusual ideas, like plum ice cream, a few recipes for plums with fresh figs, and plums in salad.

Plums can be frozen in a sugar pack (using 5 parts fruit with 1 part sugar) or syrup pack (using a 50% syrup) or frozen whole with no added sugar or syrup. Plums and prunes can also be cooked in a sugar syrup before freezing to make a sauce.

Whole plums should be stored at room temperature until ripened. Once ripe, the plums can be kept whole in a bowl in the refrigerator and covered with Glad^® Press n' Seal wrap. Or, to store cut plums, remove pits and cut fruit into chunks or wedges of desired size.

Storage tips: Plums will continue to ripen off the tree. Place ripe fruit in the fridge right away, and let unripe fruit ripen on the counter or in a paper bag. Be careful to check on ripening plums — they can go quickly from unripe to overripe.

Besides sharing the harvest with friends and family, the easiest way to deal with the extra fruit is to freeze ripe plums. Freezing them allows you to keep the fresh flavor of ripe summer plums so you can enjoy them later in the year.

Leave whole or cut in halves or quarters and pit. Syrup Pack – Use cold 40 to 50 percent syrup, depending on tartness of fruit.

Unsweetened (Dry) Pack-

Pack fruit tightly into containers, leaving proper headspace for the container type (see Headspace table below). Treated fruit slices can also be frozen first on a tray and then packed into containers as soon as they are frozen.

People having problems with constipation and drinking large quantities of plum juice could experience excessive digestive problems such as flatulence, indigestion and bloating. People might experience allergic reactions on eating plums.

Do you just bite into a plum? ›

Dry the plums completely before eating or cooking them. Eat it like an apple for a healthy snack. Be careful not to eat the pit. The skin of the plum is safe to eat and provides a sharper flavor than the flesh.

The skin is edible, but if you want raw plums without the skin, drop into into boiling water for around 15 seconds, then plunge immediately into cold water and it should come away easily. If you're cooking plums, they're easier to skin afterwards.

Plums can be frozen in a sugar pack (using 5 parts fruit with 1 part sugar) or syrup pack (using a 50% syrup) or frozen whole with no added sugar or syrup. Plums and prunes can also be cooked in a sugar syrup before freezing to make a sauce.

Whole plums should be stored at room temperature until ripened. Once ripe, the plums can be kept whole in a bowl in the refrigerator and covered with Glad^® Press n' Seal wrap. Or, to store cut plums, remove pits and cut fruit into chunks or wedges of desired size.

One common recipe to make with sour fruit is to add a bit of sugar and cook it down into a jam. The first recipe utilizes the natural sourness of the green plums to make a nice tart jam that can be used on toast, stirred into yogurt, and in many other capacities!

Composting Plums

The flesh of the plums will compost quite quickly but the stones will take much, much a longer. They will compost eventually, perhaps after a few years but if you are cold composting or intend to harvest your compost after a few months they will still be there.