• Japanese plums can be large or small.Nancy Nehring/Photodisc/Getty Images
  
  Japanese flowering plum trees come in several different cultivars. Most are vulnerable to late frosts and should be planted where cold air can drain down and away. Plant several different cultivars of Japanese plum trees to ensure cross-pollination and a fruit crop. According to the University of Rhode Island, Japanese cultivars can start producing fruit within three to five years after planting, but some can take a decade to ramp up. Choose cultivars carefully, and plant in early spring, before bloom, when the tree is still dormant.
  
  

Early Golden

• Early Golden Japanese plums ripen about two weeks before other early cultivars, offering a firm-fleshed fruit with a golden skin tinged with red, and stones that don't cling in the center. Because it grows faster and has more vigorous foliage than other Japanese plums, it only fruits every two years. This can be corrected by thinning the canopy to allow better light penetration to the center of the tree, and giving it plenty of water.
  
  

Ozark Premier

• Ozark Premier delivers big, bright red plums that ripen at the same time as Burbank and Vanier Japanese cultivars. All three varieties can be planted together and will cross-pollinate well for a single, productive harvest. Plant trees in full sun with some shelter from northwest winds and harsh weather, no less than 20 feet apart.
  
  

Shiro

• Shiro plums ripen about two weeks after Early Golden. The two cultivars can be planted together for a succession of harvest. Fruit is round, yellow with a pink blush, and very juicy. White blossoms in April make this tree, like the others, ornamental as well as productive.
  
  

Vanier

• Vanier ripens two weeks after Shiro, and trees can be picked over several times for one long harvest of bright red plums. Vanier trees grow vigorously, like Early Golden, but with a tendency to grow vertically instead of horizontally. Prune Vanier into an open-vase shape to encourage strong, horizontally-growing scaffold branches, and clip out upright shoots in spring and summer to increase light penetration and fruit production.