That’s right, two Victorias in a row. Different genus, but still in the fruit category. This does make me wonder just how many plants were named after that particular queen at the height of her popularity. Surely enough to make an interesting garden collection, given how long she reigned.

Names aside, the other reason I loosely associate these two plants is that, much like our rhubarb, our plum trees are also very old and prolific. The oldest one might very well have been planted when the farm was first built, but we had to cut that down a few years back because it was 80% dead wood. It had spawned several saplings from the copious loads of fruit it produced, though, so we still have two overgrown stands of Victoria plums that need severe pruning.

Prunus domestica ‘Victoria’ (luumu) came to Finland by way of Sweden, where it was a popular garden variety throughout the late 19th century. It’s still sold in stores, though I’m not sure how many people need them these days. I know I’ll happily give away as many as anyone can take. Did I mention that these things self-seed like mad?

Also, this tree grows annoyingly tall. I usually only notice that it is flowering when I see the upper branches covered in foamy white from my second-story bedroom window. Since all those flowers are so high up, all the fruit are very high up too, and the only way to get them is to wait for them to drop at the beginning of autumn. Before I began developing the vegetable garden and food forest, we didn’t go into that part of the garden much at all. This explains why I never even noticed we had plum trees until we had been living here for a few years.

Yes, you can tell I have a love/hate relationship with these trees. The fruit are really sweet and bountiful and I’m quite happy to have them… when we can get to them. My new tactic for next month will be to prune and harvest simultaneously, so we can start cleaning up all those wild branches and tame these trees into something more garden-friendly.

A large number of these plums are eaten fresh off the tree. They are smaller than the round supermarket plums — more like large grapes — and sweeter, too. The perfect size for school-aged kids, who can eat an entire bowlful in a single sitting if given the chance. When the glut inevitably overwhelms even the most ambitious of frugivores, I pit and halve them with a handy little kitchen gadget and freeze them in 1-liter bags for processing later in winter. In recent memory, I have made plum cobbler, plum juice, and plum jelly.

Final count:

• Prunus domestica ‘Victoria’ – 2 large and prolific stands