Plum crazy ....

When we did the major landscaping works on our garden extension six years ago, one of the trees we planted at that time was a young Victoria plum tree.

It's grown into quite a substantial tree with a trunk around 125 mm (5") diameter.  

However, it has never produced a single blossom in all the time it's been in the garden.   Given that it was probably three years old when it was planted, it's likely now heading into its tenth year and again doesn't look as if it will blossom this spring.

the old 'Victoria' plum tree

Over the years, we've tried feeding it, not feeding it, pruning it and not pruning it, but still not a sniff of fruiting potential. 

It's not in full sun until the height of the summer, its location can get a bit waterlogged if we have prolonged heavy rain during the winter and it's also quite exposed to strong westerly winds, so maybe the conditions are not ideal.  However the apple tree and one of the young pear trees are subject to exactly the same conditions, and they haven't had any problems with making blossom - the pear tree is coming into flower now.

So we've just bought ourselves two new plum trees, this time on dwarf rootstocks which we intend to keep in containers, at least for the first few years and likely indefinitely.

This time around, we bought another Victoria that's already in blossom, so at least we know it can produce flowers.  We've planted this one in a large container made from a cut-down waterbutt, so it can probably spend the rest of its life in there.

Plum 'Victoria'

The other tree is smaller, variety Reine Claudes of French descent.  Technically it's a greengage and should hopefully produce sweet yellow / green fruits.  I don't expect this one will blossom this year.  For now, we've planted it in a much larger pot than that provided by the nursery, so there's plenty of room for growth this summer although we'll likely pot it on again next year into something the size of a half barrel.

Plum 'Reine Claudes'

But we'll give the old Victoria tree one last chance - it was pruned quite hard last summer and plums generally produce their fruits on wood that's at least a year old, so we'll allow it to grow unchecked for the rest of this year and see if it finally decides to burst into blossom next spring.  

If not, then it's out with the chainsaw to make firewood ...