plums from seeds

[Derbydal]

Has anyone grown plums or green gages from seeds ? the reason I ask is when I came away from my allotment today I noticed a 6 small plants growing under my niegbours green gage tree that hangs over my plot would they be viable and how long would they take to produce fruit ? atb Dal.

[nickdub]

I brought some plum seeds back from Latvia 2 years ago (they were late season and v tasty ) and germinated about 6 of them. I planted them out this winter to grow on, currently about 18" high.

I'm unsure how long they'd take to get from now to fruiting size - a guesstimate would be a minimum of 5 years - the only practical way to shorten that would be to take buds from them this year and graft them on to a different root-stock - if it worked you might get fruit in 3 years or so - if I can be bothered and think about it at the right time - I might give it a go.

I like growing trees and shrubs from seed, but it does require a fair bit of patience before you see any results. On the other hand the plants mostly look after themselves, so you don't need to provide much apart from time.

BTW I expect some more scientific literature on how new varieties of fruit have been grown and tested would give you better info on timelines from a planted seed to new fruit etc.

[Two_Sheds]

Wild plums can grow massive, and thorny

I've inherited a "Victoria" that appears to be grafted onto blackthorn - cheap for the grower, far from ideal for the small garden

[Derbydal]

thanks guys its just that you don't see many green gage trees for sale, i'll have to be content with plucking a few when nobodys lookin lol . atb Dal

[Mark_Riga]

Greengage and damsons seed quite readily round here and are quite quick growing and fruit at quite a young age. I bought a plum tree probably about 6 years ago and have had about 6 plums off it. But some self seeded greengage trees have been bent double with fruit since. I had been going to cut them down when I first noticed them but didn't get round to it and now I'm glad I didn't. So if there are young trees there, I would move a couple to where you want them now and I would have thought you should get fruit by 2022, bit like a new asparagus bed.

[TrialAndError]

Don't bother is my advice. After five years or so you will end up with a large tree with plums that are inedible.

After ten years you will be chopping the tree down becasue it has grown so large you can't even reach the inedible plums.

[nickdub]

Don't bother is my advice. After five years or so you will end up with a large tree with plums that are inedible.

After ten years you will be chopping the tree down becasue it has grown so large you can't even reach the inedible plums.

It certainly possible that this will be the outcome, but its also possible that luck will mean you get a good new fruit variety - after all this is how all the varieties we like now such as Victoria first came to be bred.