plum tree problems

Lots of fruit trees were hit by a frost when in blossom which put paid to fruit last year.

Fruit pollination was poor last year owing to a warm spring bringing the blossom out before the pollinators were around, then a frost, and also rain preventing the pollinators flying.

Also, sometimes fruit trees take a year off after a bumper crop to recover.

As everyone has said it has been a very bad year for plums, hardly anyone got many and most of us got pretty much nothing!
What Jamrock said about thinning seems to be a good idea. Bob Flowerdew recommends thinning fruit every year (assuming it is not a year like this one with none to thin). He believes it evens out the cropping over the years making it less likely to get into the good year, bad year cycle.  He also says that yeilds are about the same whether thinned or not, a thinned crop will produce fewer but bigger fruits, a none thinned crop will produce more smaller fruits. But the other advantage of thinning is that it requires less of a trees resources to produce the sugars etc to make bigger fruits than it does to make the stones/pips etc of many smaller fruits, so it is also better for the long term health of the tree. This seems to make sense to me and is advice that I plan to follow.

Thanks for your replies. I will await the flowers and see if any buds form.