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trogers121 · Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2004 6:48 pm Post subject: Plum tree without the plums

If anyone can answer this I would be very grateful! Smile

I have a Victoria plumb tree which offered some fruit the year before last, but last year no 1 single plum grew what's the best thing to do with this?

Tom Rogers

thescruff · Moderator Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 4419 Location: Bath

Without writing a book, I will try and shorten it a tad.

First you need to cultivate an area 2-3ft around the trees, otherwise the tree could be starved of nitrogen and will make little new growth.

Plum trees should be coming into flower over the next week or so, what you don't want is a hard frost, and more about that later.

Do not spray trees when these are in flower as this will kill the bees and other pollinating insects.

There are a number of reasons that trees fail to produce a crop, one very obvious one is frost damage, if the blossom gets frosted when it is full out the crop may fail completely because the stamens and stigmas are killed, damage can also be done to the unopened buds, which is why it's important not to plant in a frost pocket, i.e. at the bottom of a slope, or in an area enclosed by a hedge on a slope, or any area enclosed where cold air can trap, cold air flows downhill like water being heavierthan warm air and builds up at the lowest point.

Another cause is buying varieties which are not self fertile and for which no suitable pollinating variety has been planted as companion.

Birds are a menace as they start pecking at the fruit buds during the winter sometimes as early as november, and often strip the trees so they they come into leaf in the spring but have no flowers.

If the soil is very fertile certain types of trees will produce vegetave groth at the expense of fruit bud, and one way of counteracting this is to bend the shoots and tie them down in curve, this tends to make them produce fruit buds rather than vegetative buds.

LAck of fruit can in some case be due to starvation if the tree is growing in poor, stony,hot soil it may produce blossom but it sets badly or the sets drop off before it matures, maggots will also cause the fruit to drop off too soon.

Finally the wrong sort of pruning leads to poor fruiting, and to a condition known as biennial bearing, in which the trees bear heavy in one year, and practically not at all the next.

scruff

trogers121 · Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2004 10:56 pm Post subject:

thanks for that, I'm going to rake in some manure around the base of the tree and grease band it at the weekend. Fingers crossed!

Dewy · Joined: 21 Oct 2004 Posts: 3

I planted a victoria plum over 35 years ago and have never had a year without any plums.
Some years it is laden with fruit but others are sparce.
They seldom give a good crop every year.
If the land is very fertile then most of the energy will go into growth therefore less to fruiting.
An old method to slow the growth and put the nutrients in the soil to fruit is to dig a circle a yard or so away from the trunk and cut some of the main roots off.
As with all prunus, plums have a shallow root system with the main roots horizontal and only a couple of inches below the ground.
My soil is heavy blue clay and plums seem to love it.
Damsons have grown from either the root stock or fallen plums and are like weeds in these conditions.
I let some grow and dig up the rest where they grow from the horizontal roots which give me extra fruit and a beautiful display of heavy white blossom every spring.
All the other prunus I have planted have done well, from dwarf cherries to peaches.
Summer pruning excludes winter born disease and allows shaping of the trees i.e. fan trained peach against a south facing wall.