I cannot figure out why my plum trees do not make plums. I have 5
really nice and big health plum trees of different varieties and they all had a bunch of blooms
on this spring, and the blooms stayed there for a good long while. but
I still don’t see any sign of any plums on any of the trees. they did
this last year too, I don’t think any of them have made any plums yet. Do any of you have any ideas?
Would you mind specify the varieties you have?
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methley plum, red june plum, blue damson plum, chickasaw plum, santa rosa plum. Also there are honey bees close, and there’s no spraying near by either.
Some of those are self fertile…so. Rainy or cold?
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Methley, Blue Damson and Santa Rosa are supposed to be self fertile. So is Shiro.
However, the year that my Shiro’s partner, Satsuma, had no bloom (flower buds were killed by late freeze), Shiro bloomed profusely but set no fruit that year. So, I don’t really trust the self fertile label.
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My methley had about 15 blossoms but not fruit formation. I’ve had my tree for two years now. Maybe it is to young.
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Did you observe pollination activity? Even if there is a hive nearby they may not be visiting.
I have one unknown plum that tastes like bubblegum and flowers a lot but hasn’t set fruit for the past two years for no apparent reason.
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How old are your trees? Young trees do not produce much.
For your trees, you have Methley, Santa Rosa and Red June that are Japanese plum
Blue Damson is Euro plum.
Euro and Asian plum do not cross pollinate.
Methley, Santa Rosa and Damson are supposed to be self fertile but self fertile trees often benefit from having a partner to cross pollinate with.
Methley and Santa Rosa are supposed to be good partners for cross pollination.
Chickasaw is a different type of plum from Euro or Japanese.
Maybe, the condition during blooms were not good, wet, cold, windy or all of them. Hopefully, your trees will produce more as they mature.
You can also graft more varieties to those trees to increase cross pollination chances.
My guess
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I’m bumping this thread just because I have new relevant experience.
In 2017, I planted Black Ice and Alderman, both standard trees on Myroloban. They both grew well and produced lots of blooms but never any plums. So I figured that I had a pollination problem.
This year, I planted a new LaCrescent and grafted some Toka. Neither variety bloomed but I hoped that next year I’d have a more robust set of pollinators. And I began to top-work the Black Ice, which had displayed some BK, taking off two of three scaffolds this year.
Well, now I seem to have plums on both. It’s still early – the little plums may not hold. But there is definitely fruit on both.
Maybe there have been other past issues too – volatile weather, plum curculio, who knows? But my take-away is a reminder that it sometimes takes a very long time for a standard tree to begin bearing fruit.
Among European varieties also on standard rootstock, I have Bluebyrd on Myroloban, planted in 2018, that gave it’s first decent crop last year (after a small crop the year before), and well as President on Marianna GF8-1, also planted in 2018, that looks like it might produce its first crop this year.
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Euro plums are known to take a long time (6-8 years) to set fruit, esp. if on standard rootstocks.
My is in a semi dwarf, Marianna 2624 and I bent branch to help with speeding up fruit production.
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Wild Goose: Oikos Tree Crops, Date planted: 13/6/2020, when I contacted Oikos last year to inquire as to why my trees covered with blossoms were not setting fruit, they told me at least five years before they are mature enough to set fruit, so I was hoping that this spring I would get fruit set, I have two cultivars of Wild Goose one with pink blossoms the other white, so I tried hand pollination as these two trees open blossoms over a 3 week period, but I did not get any fruit set this season. Very healthy looking trees but I need to continue waiting for maturity. BTW Chickasaw needs more than a single tree, in its native setting they compose thickets of variants so they do much better setting fruit where multiple variants exist. You can plant some P Americana to cross pollinate these. They also cross with Wild Goose from my earlier experience
Dennis
Kent, Wa
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LOL – I probably “knew” this at one time but then forgot. I guess I’ve been spoiled by figs, persimmons, even dwarf apples that fruit well within a year or two after planting.
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You could bend branches to speed it up, too.
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The Alderman has a fair number of almost horizontal branches – without interference from me. Unfortunately, if I bend them any lower I’d be inviting the local deer to dine.