All of my trees arrived, but the plum is the interesting one. I ordered from a bunch of places (starbros, dave wilson, etc)
My plum came from raintree along with two cherries, and I’m upset about the pruning job but they came with the largest root system of all the trees I’ve gotten.
The plum has 5 varieties, stanley, victoria, schoolhouse, sceneca, and mt royal. I especially wanted the victoria and schoolhouse.
The stanley graft was absolutely massive, while the Victoria was tiny and would be rubbing on the stanley. I figured my best option was to remove the stanley entirely since it would probably be too vigorous and overshadow the other grafts. The victoria can be on the south side of the tree all by itself and hopefully I can even out the growth.
The branch I’m holding in the second pic is the stanley
all of my multi-graft trees are like this. my plan is to encourage buds near the base of each vertical to come out (with pruning or notching/promalin) and then remove the vertical above that bud sometime later. this has worked on a couple branches so far but it’s a work in progress. your stanley branch is obviously too big, I think you’ll have to keep beating it back all summer. I had one like that and it was starving the one next to it so much that the little one actually flowered when it finally got some energy and grew late last year
btw I got the 4-way japanese plum from raintree this year and it’s a beautiful stocky thing, pretty much perfect except the top graft became the new trunk (I think I got all 5 varieties but the top one wasn’t labeled). I’m actually really pleased with it, it’s around 2" caliper which is bigger than I’ve ever gotten a nursery tree. just need to get the grafts going horizontal
Oh that’s a great idea! Just create new scaffold branches lower down and more spread out
Yeah the stanley is gonna go bye bye lmao. I left a few buds for scions that I can practice grafting on, once I do that I’ll nip the rest of the branch off at the end of summer and get rid of it entirely
Out of curiosity, when did you place your order with Raintree? I’m still waiting on my order and want to have an idea of how they are doing catching up to their delayed start to mailing orders this year.
I’m in Western WA myself. I placed my order mid-January and was told I should expect it in March. I’m hoping with the timing of your order and shipment that means I’ll get it in early March rathe than late.
Yeah hopefully! Mine shipped last Wednesday, the confirmation email was in promotions instead of primary. It took one day, I bet they’ll send yours soon
You can spread the branches out using plastic branch spreaders. I bought mine set from Stark Brothers. I bought a couple of sets of different sizes they carry. So far I am impressed with the quality of them.
