I’m looking for some advice , I planted these trees 7 years ago , and they are not producing more the a dozen plums a year. They are Pembina and Brookred trees. I was wondering if doing a heading Cut to turn them into a vase shape would still be worthwhile at this point , or if it’s better to leave them as is? I live in central Alberta , and the fence behind the tree is 6 feet for reference.
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Just cut all the branches growing toward the main trunk. I don’t think that will increase your crop much though. Consider grafting some better cropping varieties onto some of the branches.
The weight of fruit will likely cause branches to bend wider and lower over time. My recommendation would be to just selectively thin the canopy so that there’s a little more room to get between the branches to harvest all the fruit.
Edit: I re-read and see that these aren’t producing much. The very light crops are not gonna be due to pruning at this point. It would probably be good to pay attention to them when they’re in bloom this year. Are the two trees blooming together or is one earlier than the other? Are pollinators regularly visiting the flowers? Are they getting hit with a hard freeze during or after bloom? Are they even blooming well?
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I’m guessing a native American/Canadian plum is needed to pollinate them?
Might try to pinpoint the issue.
Do both trees blossom roughly at the same time, is there enough overlap? Pollination issue
Do you still get frosts that might damage blossoms? Weather issue
Do the trees start producing a lot of small fruit but there are only a few left at harvest time? Disease or animal issue.
Pruning may help if the tree is diluting resources to all the branches. This podcast said summer pruning helps fruit production while winter helps roots (paraphrasing)
Good luck
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So these are supposed to be cross pollinating , but I have my doubts since there both hybrids. I planted a princess Kay , which is " technically " a Prunus nigra close by just out of the picture , but Its a decorative plum that’s been designed for double blossoms , so I am not sure if it’s pollinating. The Brookred blooms first in spring , followed by the Pembina 10 days later on the right . All 3 plums have at least a few weeks of bloom crossover , and lots of bees flying around on the trees last year. There were lots of starting fruit , but very few matured , particularly on the Brookred on the left. ( I only got like 5 Plums). There were no Frost’s that I can think of , but the tree are covered in ants by June. I Planted a Prunus americana whip ( Wild American plum) last spring , which hasn’t flowered yet. I’m wondering if it’s a pruning problem as the trees grow very vigorously.
Here is a picture from last spring , you can see they flower vigorously.
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Might could use more honey or mason bees.
You mentioned that the trees are covered with ants in June. Are the young green fruitlets holding on for a while, but then mostly disappearing once the ants show up? The ants are very likely farming sap sucking insects (aphids or similar) on your trees and if they’re putting enough stress on the trees it could cause lots of the fruit to abort in an effort to conserve resources.
It might be a worthwhile experiment to paint the trunks with some sort of ant deterrent to observe whether it could make a positive impact on the fruit production. It looks like there are a number of products available which could perform this service, and probably some homemade remedy possibilities too.
https://www.google.com/search?q=tree+trunk+ant+deterrent&oq=tree+trunk+ant+deterrent&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRigATIHCAYQIRirAtIBCDc1OTJqMWo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
There are several good comments above that could be helpful. Your trees look very healthy. Some varieties simply require more years of maturity before they will bear fruit. I have several Wild Goose trees that are going into year 6 with no blossoms setting fruit. So I try to be patient and I have added other varieties that might cross pollinate them. I have grafts of Brook red grafts growing but not enough time to observe fruiting, hopefully this year. You could have an aphid issue suggested by the ants, so pay attention on your new foliage to determine if that could be your problem. Finally three weeks of cross over of blossom time, only means the earlier one can pollinate the later one, to cross pollinate each other you need blossoms opening at the same time, so pollen of each variety is available. So I would obtain more compatible varieties to graft into each perhaps using the central leaders.
Dennis
Kent, Wa
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