Kahinta Plum (Spring 2027)

This is our first year growing Kahinta, so everything below is secondhand until we get more long-term data from our own mother trees.

Overview

Kahinta is another of N.E. Hansen's South Dakota hybrid plums. It's a dark red plum with yellow-orange flesh, it's good fresh, and like Kaga it's a good pollenizer for other hybrid plums.

Origin and History

Hansen introduced Kahinta in 1912. It's a cross of Luther Burbank's Japanese plum Apple with Terry, a native American plum raised by H.A. Terry of Crescent, Iowa. Hansen said the name is Sioux for "sweep." It's a sister seedling of Waneta and Tawena, and Hansen put the quality of all three as "approximating that of the peach in excellence." He also noted Kahinta was the heaviest plum on the grounds during the very dry season of 1911, at about an ounce each.

Fruit and Uses

Hansen described it as an inch and a half across, dark red and roundish, with firm, sweet, yellow flesh. Fedco calls the skin "brilliant red-purple" and tart and the flesh "translucent yellow-orange tart but quite flavorful," says it peels easily, and rates it very good for fresh eating or canning. Bob Purvis says it keeps well in the fridge, has been well accepted at farmers' markets in Idaho, and ripens early to mid September there. Hansen called it a freestone, but Fedco and Purvis both say clingstone.

Growth Habit and Spacing

Purvis and Fedco both describe a spreading tree, and Fedco says it "bears more reliably than most other varieties in our orchard." Ours are on Prairie Red plum semi-dwarf rootstock, which is more uniform than native plum and tends to top out around 15 feet here. Plan on 12 to 15 feet between trees.

Pollination

Kahinta needs another plum to set fruit, and Purvis calls it a "good pollenizer for other hybrid plums." Toka, South Dakota, Native American Plum, Kaga, Superior and Black Ice all work.

Cold Hardiness

Fedco rates Kahinta zone 3. We haven't found a documented survival temperature yet. We've listed it at zone 3 and will update it once we've wintered our own trees.

About the photo: this isn’t Kahinta itself. Photos of Kahinta are either under copyright or simply unavailable, so we picked the open-source image that looks closest to the fruit. Photo: “Prunus domestica fruits 001” by StMH, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.