Mine was about 6 - 7 feet tall when planted and took about 10 years to make some plums. When it was 14 - 15 years in-ground it had to be cut down from massive black knot infection. It was producing a decent size crop at that time.
The only other plums I had were Asian plums in the back yard. This was the only plum in the front yard. I was told Asian plums won’t pollinate the Green Gage.
How long did you Green Gage take to make decent crops?
Did yours take 10 years to start flowering, or was it already flowering in years prior to its first fruit set? From my observation, ‘Green Gage’ is only partially self fertile.
I have a Mt Royal… planted in 2018… it has bloomed the last two springs (finally) but has not set and held fruit to ripe yet.
I added two grafts of green guage to it last year and they grew well.
Hope to harvest either one soon.
TNHunter
My Reine Claud Doree set one fruit after 1 year in ground. My bavay and golden transparent have not fruited after 2 years in ground.
My brother’s took about 7 years from the time it was planted. He didn’t prune it or anything though.
I think if you did some bending you could speed up fruiting.
I guess it must be my climate, because most of my fruit trees produce fruit in a far faster time than others state are normal. Many of my fruit trees that I’ve planted in the winter fruit the following summer. I would say the majority of my Euro plums have taken 2 years in ground before they produce.
A year after I planted my green gage it produced well over 50 plums. I cut the entire crop off the first year as I felt it was too soon for such a large crop. I decided to relocate the area for my Euro plums, so that winter I dug up the green gage and relocated it to my fence line where I now grow other Euro plums shaped as fans. The gage was pruned hard (50% +) and reshaped into a fan from an open center tree. It took a year to recover from the loss of root mass and heavy pruning. However, it is doing fine now and has been producing again for the last couple of seasons.
I have a very mild PNW climate that fruit trees seem to thrive in. This year is almost over, and we’ve pretty much been frost free since March or April. Nov and Dec have been very warm so far, but I’m sure we’ll get a big dump of snow before winter ends.
Don’t remember, sorry.
Back then I didn’t pay attention to the trees. I just put them in the ground and waited to get fruit.
Here’s a very long video about green gage (starts around minute 12). The gist is that it has a lot of drawbacks (late maturity, poor yeild, self sterile, etc) that make it a poor choice for commercial production, but it’s still popular because of the outstanding fruit quality.
I lost my tree cause after years of producing light crops, another plum tree that was able to pollinize it began flowering and caused my ‘Green Gage’ to put on such a heavy crop that the whole tree broke at the trunk. It survived for a couple more years from the bit of bark that was still attached between the broken top and the trunk, but eventually I lost it entirely.