Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: nijjhar on May 08, 2019, 12:01
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Hi,
I bought plum trees from Lidl and they produced very heavy crop for two years and not very little fruit. It has happened for the past three years.
Any suggestions? Shall I uproot the tree?
Also, where can you get a big bag of 15/15/15 chemical manure?
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Have you been pruning the plums? I can't offer pruning advice myself but when I didn't prune my apples properly they stopped setting fruit. They flowered well but no fruit set.
Maybe post a picture of one of the trees?
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I find that it my plum tree (variety unknown, although probably Victoria) has a glut year it is usually followed by one or more poor years.
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if a lot of blossom then pick quite a bit out, the tree takes a holiday if too much fruit one year so you need to balance it out
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I have a pear and a couple of apple trees - did have a dwarf stock plum tree and a bruiser of a plum tree that I bought cheaply in a supermarket-style shop (possibly Lidl - cant remember).
All the plums trees performed well but the dwarf out performed the cheap huge tree every year. The cheap huge tree fruited fairly well every other year. I chopped it's height (pruned carefully I mean) - didn't seem to worry it - needs to be the right time of year (after fruiting I think I recall).
The pear and apple trees do take a bit of a break every other year as well - a fair bit of blossom but less fruit followed by a year of dripping with apples and pears.
A late frost can knock a fruit tree's ability to set fruit so that might be the cause.. I would leave yours in the ground and give them another chance. Keep well watered, remove vegetation from around the trunk and maybe give a handful of good old pelleted chicken manure to give it a boost later in the year.
Wishing you luck - nothing lovelier than plums straight from the tree :) (Jam too)