Yakima Plum

Overview

Yakima is one of the most cold hardy of the European plums. The are the most massive plums we've seen growing in Montana. It occupies a valuable niche for northern orchards: a true European plum with dessert-quality fruit that has been successfully grown in regions where many standard European plums struggle.

Origin and history

The precise origin and parentage of Yakima are not documented in verifiable primary sources. While Yakima appears in multiple nursery catalogs and grower references, no authoritative breeding record or confirmed parentage has been published.

Fruit & Uses

Yakima produces notably large plums for a European type. The skin is a mahogany red to pinkish-violet with flesh ranging from yellow to amber. The fruit is  freestone, firm, sweet, and very good quality. It is well suited to fresh eating and also performs well for traditional European plum uses such as drying and preserving. Yakima can ripen over an extended window of roughly two to three weeks, which allows for staggered harvest rather than a single compressed picking period.

Growth Habit

Yakima grows with an upright, vigorous habit typical of European plums. With standard pruning practices, it can be trained into either an open-center or modified central leader form, prioritizing light penetration and renewal of fruiting wood.

Spacing

We offer Yakima on Krymsk 86. Krymsk 86 is considered a semi-dwarf to semi-vigorous stone fruit rootstock. A practical spacing range for this rootstock is approximately 15 feet between trees, depending on pruning intensity, desired canopy size, and site vigor. Wider spacing supports airflow and ease of maintenance; tighter spacing requires more active canopy management.

Pollination

Yakima is not reliably self-fertile and requires cross-pollination from another European plum.

We offer several European plums that can serve as potential pollenizers, including: Italian, Early Italian, Stanley, Mount Royal, and Northern Blue. Asian x American hybrid plums will not work as pollenizers for Yakima, not will native plum or prairie red.

Cold hardiness

Yakima is fairly cold hardy, and is very hardy to a European plum. It survived our friend James Sapp's -29F in Missoula without any winter injury. Purvis notes that it is hardy to -40F and lists it as a zone 3. Whether Yakima can survive in the colder valleys west of the divide in MT we do not have the data, but any area that sees below -40F would have to plant with caution, i.e. certainly avoid depressions/frost pooling areas, make sure there is adequate airflow, and possibly even plant near structures for thermal buffering. Hardy to zone 3.

Other Notes

Yakima stands out because it delivers genuinely large, freestone European plums in climates where such fruit is often difficult to achieve. The extended ripening period reported by growers is an especially useful trait for home orchards and small-scale plantings.

No cultivar-specific disease resistance has been documented for Yakima in verifiable sources. As with most European plums, long-term health depends primarily on site selection, spacing, airflow, pruning, and orchard sanitation rather than inherent resistance traits.