The Beach plum has showy flowers that attract native pollinators. It also has edible fruit, making it valuable for people and wildlife.

It certainly was a banner year for beach plums on Cape Cod! I live in Brewster and did great here then went to Truro to pick up some canning jars and could not believe the beach plums out your way! Picked a total of 15 gallons! Made a lot of liquor and froze the rest to make jam. Now, I just need to find lids!!!!

“Reptiles” on eBay has the best, dark purple beach plum seeds. Posts around Oct 1st each yr.

I have always bought beach plum Jelly when I stop in Lewes, DE to see a family friend. I love it! Living on Long Island, I knew they were around, but didn’t know where. I went on a foraging hike on the North Shore and was shown exactly where they are. I was so excited to pick the fruit! Unfortunately, the deer know where the trees are and beat me to the best harvest. I managed to pick a quart, which was just enough for this recipe. I’ve used pectin to make jam, but with such a small amount of fruit, I was leery of using a smaller amount, so I went with this recipe. It turned out wonderful! Can’t wait for next year to make it again!

Don- great posts. Many thanks. I pit beach plums I pick before making jam. Wish I read your posts before I threw hundreds of beach plum stones (pits? seeds?) into my compost. Will follow your directions next year. When you plant your beach plums in the ground do you have very sandy soil where you live? If not, do you add lots of sand to the area you plant your beach plums in? My mother-in-law lives in Central CT and know her soil is more like clay, not sandy. Very different environment than Cape Cod. Do you fertilize your beach plum plants at all? I would not expect to, but do use organic fertilizer on our lawn; expect some might run off to beach plums planted there.

I’ve had good success with this approach. First, I harvest the ripe beach plums, and before I cook them, I simply squeeze out the pits from a dozen or more of them using my finger and thumb. I’ve collected 50 seeds so far this season, and will collect 50 more from yesterday’s harvest. After I have squeezed the seeds out of the plums, I rinse them in cold water, giving them a bit of a collective rub in both hands to remove most of the pulp. I don’t try to get them perfectly clean. Next, I put the pits into a Zip-loc plastic bag along with a handful or two of damp sphagnum peat (peat is very acidic and is a natural fungus inhibitor, so don’t try to use regular soil or even peat-based potting soil, which is treated with lime to raise the pH), seal the baggy, and put it into the crisper of my refrigerator until March. I’ve had quite a few pits sprout on their own in the peat in the fridge by March.

In March, whether they’ve sprouted or not, I remove the seeds from the peat and plant them an inch deep in 7 inch pots, 6 or 8 pits to a pot, using normal potting soil. I water them and after the water has had an hour or three to drain, I put them, covered with plastic domes or in plastic bags to keep them from drying out, into a cool spot in the greenhouse or into a cold frame, but not in a location where they will get much sun. Once they’ve sprouted, I tend to keep them in a shady location for their first year. NOTE: once the seedlings have emerged, they need to be protected from squirrels or chipmunks for at least their first spring: the animals will go after the nutrients that are still left in the seed leaves or cotyledons for some weeks after the seedlings are above ground. I have several seedlings from this spring on my back deck still wrapped in a cocoon of 1/2 hardware mesh after one critter or the other dined on several of their siblings. The seedlings don’t grow very much above ground their first year or two, so they should probably be kept in containers for two years or grown in protected beds and transplanted to their permanent locations in their third spring. By then, they should have good root systems. Once established, they can easily put out two feet of new growth a year. If not pruned, my best guess is that they will fairly easily reach about 8 to 10 feet in height when the conditions are ideal.

A note about beach plum flowers: On my bushes, the flowers buds show up in tiny clusters of four blossoms each, and most of the previous year’s new growth produces many clusters of flower buds along a good part of each shoot. In full bloom the bushes are quite impressive.

Insect and Disease Issues: So far, while three young Pluots growing fifty feet away have already had issues with black knot, the beach plums have not. I don’t use fungicides or pesticides on them. Consistently over the three harvests, a very small percentage of the fruit have been visited by insects and are damaged. This damage is fairly easy to spot when you are harvesting, or as you rinse the fruit.

It’s fun to read the various Beach Plum comments.

As for me, I cannot imagine wine in beach plum jelly.

Nope, I agree with several of your other readers. 1) rose hips/Rosa rugosa and 2) beach plums/Prunus maritima are not the same. However, both grow near the ocean & both are edible.

During the fifties our family used to pick beach plums alongside the dirt roads in Harwich Port in late August. Soon thereafter, Mother would turn them into superb jelly.

When preparing the jelly, it’s helpful to include a few of the less ripe fruits (for their pectin content) along with the ripe red & purple plums — if you’re not using a commercial pectin jell.

For guests or gifts we would buy a few jars of Cora’s Beach Plum Jelly from her stand in Wellfleet. Long gone, I feel sure. Great memories, though.

Thanks for your wonderful topical stories.