Dapple Dandy Pluot 2021

Just did…

Another thing to try,is cut a small branch with flower buds,from a Japanese Plum or a Pluot.Put that in a vase of water,inside where it’s warm.Then when those bloom,hand pollinate your Dapple Dandy.

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I’ve run out of messages.

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Really? Lol
OK. We continue to talk when you can… :+1:

Drew, which of your other trees are pollination partners for your Dapple Dandy?

My Dapple Dandy just got a serious haricut for shaping. Long overdue.

Thanks @Jose-Albacete for the tips. I’ve got 3 branches just about 120° apart now.



I don’t know what you’ll get out of a scalping that severe. No way to know what will push or in what direction. Your tree needed some trimming, just not that much. But you have a long season and it will regrow rapidly.

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I’ve got 4 full months left of growing season. Plenty of time to see what pushes where.

In a few weeks I’m sure to see where it wants to grow.

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Steven, pluots, like most Japanese plum trees, have a strong tendency to sprout long, unbranched branches, so a multi-story structure is necessary (for a pluot, three stories is sufficient).
It’s advisable to keep the first pruning shorter than subsequent ones (always in the vegetative stage).
When the new shoots reach a length of about 70 centimeters, they will be pruned again in the vegetative stage to about 20 centimeters to obtain the second story, and the same for the third.
No winter pruning will be done until the structure is fully formed at the desired height.
Once the structure has reached the desired height (it will only take a couple of years), from that point on, and in subsequent years, the pruning will be carried out in winter in latencia state , and the following three pruning procedures will be performed:

  • Remove all central branches, which over time have forced the outer branches to open outwards. This way, the center of the tree will be well-ventilated.

  • Remove crossed outer branches.

  • Reduce the tree’s height to approximately 2.5 meters through pruning. This pruning is called paralysis to induce fruiting.

This is the fastest and most effective way to obtain a tree with a good structure, manageable because it won’t be very tall, for harvesting, treatments, etc., and a very productive tree.

This pruning should have been done last year, but since it wasn’t done, the tree was becoming feral , and drastic action was needed.

Regards
Jose

No Phil , the objective is the following , with this type of pruning in vegetative state .
By cutting in vegetative state , the tree is invigorated and should respond by emitting many new shoots on each of the pruned primary branches ( it will be like an arithmetic progression ) , since from three primary branches we should get a minimum of 6 to 9 secondary branches ( or more ) , and the same will happen in the next pruning .
As the number of branches increases progressively , the inner branches force the outer branches to grow outward ( as the pluot has a tendency to grow vertically ) .
Once the process is finished , we will keep the best placed outer branches , forming a good structure , and everything else will be eliminated by pruning , but this time and in successive pruning will be done in a dormant state , since what we seek on this occasion is not to invigorate the tree but to weaken it , to force its entry into fruiting.
That is the objective.

Now that you have done an aggressive pruning, you should water the tree well and apply fast absorbing fertilization (amino acids and algae extracts are the best).

Regards
Jose

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My pluots fruit heavily in the second year at about 7 feet height with minimal pruning. By the third year, now on my current trees, they are as big as I want, about 8ft tall. I want small trees as they are spaced 7ft by 6ft with temporary trees in between, 3x7ft.

Pluots fruit on last years wood and on spurs on older wood. They can crop at a young age without complicated pruning.

The second tree is multigrafted so a bit lopsided and not much fruit. It’s mostly Flavor Supreme which doesn’t set much.

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Lose the stake, since you turned your tree into one! :wink:

Not all varieties, if they are on non-precocious rootstocks like Myro. My Emerald drop on citation fruited the next year and the same on myro is on it’s 5th leaf, and just getting started.

Phil,
I hope other growers don’t view this as guidance to train a plum tree, I would have taken off the 3 lowest branches as they would ultimately been shaded by overhead foliage, and I would have cut back all of the upper limbs by perhaps up to 1/3 their length from each fork, and I would have pruned them to prevent growth towards the center, but you took off way too much of those principal scaffolds. Much of what you removed could easily have been trained to fill in the circle.
Dennis
Kent, Wa

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You learn by doing. I’ll live with what I get and see how to adjust later this summer.

This is also on Rootpac-R rootstock which I’d doubt anyone else has in the forum (or not many).

I’ve grown many varieties of pluot and plums in my greenhouse and none took anywhere near 5 years to fruit. They all bloom on last year’s wood. How can it take 5 years?

How old is your tree?

5 years for a plum or pluot tree to enter production it’s an awful lot of time.
It should produce its first fruit in 2 years, and by the third year, it should be fully productive.

Yes, Steven, you have the Dapple Dandy in a simple multi-axis formation, completely valid and quick to enter production.
I prefer a Spanish Bush system, but that’s a matter of taste.

If Phil had done the initial pruning last year, his tree would surely look similar to yours, but he didn’t prune it and let it grow wild, and now he has to start from scratch.

Flavor Supreme is a delight, but for good fruit set, the conditions must be absolutely perfect, otherwise it is a low-yielding variety.

This year it rained during the flowering period and this year I will harvest very little Flavor Supreme.

Regards
Jose

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Its funny José…I actually DID prune last summer. Not done well and not enough.

:smile:

Just the two of us?

I pruned back a few of my trees like that plout of yours last March to graft them and get Rootpack suckers to stump mound so I could propagate it, but none came.

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Haha up north thats easily 2 years of growth cut off. I have a multi-variety that has a similar imbalance but I have not given it is haircut this year.

All that budwood gone! I would pay you for some if you think its still any good or hasnt been composted lol. Been looking to add Dapple Dandy for awhile even though its unlikely to thrive in z5 NY.

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