Boy oh boy! Can you feel my pain? This one hurts me bad!!! First year I’ve had a very heavy fruit load on my Spring Satin Pluot, and I got greedy. I did thin but clearly not nearly enough. THis is one of my favorite fruits so I tried to leave too many. All went well all spring until just a couple days ago I’m walking in my orchard and my blood runs cold!!! I see that I’ve lost a GIANT limb and several dozen almost ripe fruit!!! (they aren’t close enough to table ripen). That’s bad enough, but the way it broke off leaves me worried about the remaining tree. This is a jagged, very large, very open wound right at ground level where bugs can easily go (and fungus, etc). I’m on the “do not cover the wound with dressing” side of the argument though I am tempted to coat this area with tanglefoot tree wound dressing which i do have. But I think I’ll follow the (slightly) majority of experts who think its better not to cover it. But I’ll listen to any of your suggestions.
Meanwhile, learn from my greed and mistake…better to thin and loose a few fruit than not thin enough and loose a big section of tree, lots of fruit, and end up with a compromised tree.
that sucks Kev! id maybe spray the wound with a fungicide and just keep a eye on it. could have been worse and split down that seem in the middle. i think it will heal well. i had one of my juliets break nearly completely off in a wind storm. i just put it back in place braced it with 2 pieces of bamboo and electrical tape. never lost a leaf and was as good as new by late summer.
Thanks for that, Steve. It gives me some hope. I’ve seen smaller wounds turn into big, festering, rotting holes that take over the tree, and I’ve seen larger ones callus over and never miss a beat. So I guess you never know. I actually thought about trying to put it back together and see if it might heal like a graft but it had been 2 days and its too big to hold in place and so on. So we’ll just have to wait and see. The best news is that I like Spring Satin so much that I started a backup tree 3 years ago, so even if this one dies next year I’ll have more SS fruit coming soon. I tend to do “back ups” of my favorite trees and its been a life saver- though I know many people don’t have room for that.
That is exactly the lesson I was hoping to teach people with the photos and post. You know what’s sad though…right this minute I have a few other plum trees that I know are overloaded and I’m trying to find that magic spot between leaving the max amount of fruit and not hurting the tree. So if I can’t even teach myself a lesson I probably can’t teach anyone else. ha… Do as I say, not as I do!
Annie probably could come up with some use for the unripe fruit, but its too late…I already turned them into chicken food! haha Oh well…at least they aren’t a total waste that way.
my father once lost a large branch like that off his prize apple. he put it back in place with my help and screwed it back in place with 3 4in screws then tied it to the main trunk of the tree so most of the pressure was off the limb. didnt that branch heal. by fall he removed the screws and rope. he did prune it back some to remove some weight but it was good after that. was lucky he found the damage soon after it happened.
It’s not just the fruit load. Those branches have some nasty crotches. It’s not good to have them all coming from the same height on the trunk next to each other. You may want to remove some of these branches that form those acute crotches.
You make an outstanding point,Murky, no doubt about it. Even though that tree doesn’t look that large or old, it is actually an 8 year old tree so I started it when I knew less about fruit growing than I do now (hard as that is to imagine!). In later years I’ve always hated the way I sort-of created/trained it to be more like a bush than a tree. As you said, it has multiple branches all starting way too low and then growing out all at the same time and height. I’ve often thought about cutting some of those other branches-all with bad angles- off but they seemed to big to just prune away by the time I was “smart” enough to realize I should. But of course, it would have been 100 times better to have cut them off with a nice, smooth cut made just outside the collar instead of this brutal ripped off area that goes fairly deep into the core of the main tree. So I’m glad you said that…seeing this should give me the courage to go ahead and remove some of those other poorly placed limbs.
I picked the first two early golden plums. They could have hung a day or two more but they would have been soft, and I like my fruit firmer. Skin was tart and the flesh was sweet and kind of peachy flavored. So far it’s a keeper. Very vigorous tree.
I also went by a friend of mines office today and noticed a peach tree growing in his front flower beds. To my surprise some of the peaches were ripe and of course I took and ate one. Slightly firm not mealy really nice flavor. These are 45 days earlier than my earliest peaches so it was a great surprise.
I have to say that, looking at the downed branch, it doesn’t seem to be overloaded with fruit at all. I wonder if there could have been a canker or something that weakened the wood in that area/
To be fair, a LOT of fruit fell off the limb when it fell, so it had a lot more than you see. Also, as @murky said, the crotch angle was just awful on that limb. Last but not least, there were some cankers around on that that tree so it is possible contributing factor also.
My Niedzwetzkyana apple tree (bought 2012 from Trees of Antiquity) has it’s first heavy crop…and the tree looks like a hoop to a hoop house today …guess I’ll just try and straighten the leader after the crop. It’s on M111 and about 12 feet tall.
Redfield could end up the same, but so far it’s lighter crop has not bent the limbs.
Odds are high the trees cross pollinated each other.
What do you do with them? I drop mine where they fall.
Yesterday I had an Isaac Newton moment, if he were mentally impaired, while thinning apples. Dropped one from full reach right onto my eyeball. I felt like a genius.
I’ve been dumping them in the trash. Ive targeted the fruits that have insect bites or blemishes. In the event a fruit is full of worms I’d rather it be thrown away that leave it lie under the tree.
