Here’s a couple pics of our American Plum (Prunus Americana) thickets, when I first bought the property, we had some native plants and I honestly overlooked or didn’t fully understand their benefits.
Since then, I’ve plant about 2,000 in total for soft mast production and utilize the thickets to create edge funnels past deer stands. An all-around good choice for wildlife and pollinators, tolerates and will grow in wide range of soil types and PH from (5.5-7.5). The leaves are highly digestible to whitetails, the thickets create fawn bedding areas, thermal escape and nesting areas for many bird species, help with erosion control. The fruit shown, is consumed by a wide variety of birds, deer, bear, foxes etc. One more thought if you’re looking for soft mast or wildlife diversity in your property management strategies.

we planted this yr to go along with our wild grapes,pears,peaches..mulberries,concords, raspberries. etc. ,.in s.d. the coyotes loved the native plums!

We have some planted here....but between me and the kids the deer wont have a chance. We also have figs, natural wild grapes, scuppernongs, muscadines, persimmon, pawpaw, southern crab apple, blueberry, blackberry, mayhaw and some others.

Looks great!

Those things make a delicious jam
They're ripe here right now.

Indeed they do! Gotta be careful not to let them get away from you, they will spread out and create an almost inpenetrable jungle!

I planted american plum in a shelterbelt and riparian buffer about 10 or 12 years ago and have great thickets/wildlife cover. I always wanted to make some plum jam but do not seem to get to the fruit before the critters and birds do ...and that's ok. I am thinking about putting in some more plum ...before I get too old!

Ours have been long gone. Ours make around June/July.

one method that an old homesteader showed me was to eat one plum from each tree before you pick for jam making.
You would be surprised in some are sweet and others are sour so the chose was what to put in the pail or leave.

Based on my taste test yesterday- I concur... the ripeness appeared to be the same but the sweetness was not.

I have some in my yard here. Our old English Setter would, when he was in his teens, waddle out to the plum trees and just gorge himself on the ones on the ground. He'd eat til he looked bloated. Then, a day or two later you'd be out in the yard and hear him yip and, sure enough, he was poop'n pits.

We burned a lot of calories creating habitat to move deer across our property- that proved to be successful and now we're pretty much focusing on creating these types of funnels, albeit not fully mature habitat yet- my son shot a nice 9 on the sneak out of the stand shown last year.

I only have 3 domestic plumbing and a few wild. They're all producing but the Three are young yet.
All done for the year.

Hence the old wheezer about hounds and Peach pits! LOL

I have planted a few in with a variety of apples. I have probably 300-500 fruit trees total and in the Fall the critters have trails connecting the dots between trees.

I bought three to plant on my place. Bare root. Decided to put them in pots so I could water them this year. They all got spots on the leaves and the leaves curled up and turned brown and fell off. It looked similar to cedar apple rust

There’s a few plum trees near one of my treestands that I walk by. Last year they were sweet, and so far this year they are sour. Same trees, roughly same time of year.

I kept a couple hundred pits last year to freeze and plant this year. Forgot about them lol.

I have a crab apple tree with over ripe apples on them. The deer eat the apples they can reach and one of the deer is even smarter. She rubs against the tree causing the apples that can't be reached to fall on the ground.

What is your source for them? Plant in the spring I assume. thanks......jk

JP just take those frozen stones and with a shovel dig down 4 inches and throw 5-6 pits in the crack of the shovel space, then back heal in, 10 feet further repeat

One thing about plums is they need 2 trees of the same species close by for bee's cross pollination to occur and the production will increase.