Plum trees

[bobleponge]

Hello everyone
I am normally a vegetable forum person but the boss has just told me that there is a nice house that we would like to buy not too far from where we are currently.
We have around 20 plum trees of differing sizes in the garden (I suspect they have all grown from an initial planting of 2) and if we do move I would like to take a couple with me.
Can anyone tell me if this would be possible and if so how would I go about it. She is already in the garden taking cuttings of all our soft fruits just in case we do go.
Thanks in advance

L'eponge

[jeannine]

I guess you might be able to move your very young ones if you dig them up sharpish, while they are dormant, with as big a root ball as possible, and put them in big pots.

If it takes an average of 3 - 4 months for a house sale to go through, then you'd need to keep your trees in pots till early summer, which will take regular watering, and they won't be happy being planted while they're in bloom.

Hopefully someone who knows more about this will have more useful words of advice!

Must be a nice house that your OH is looking at, if I already had an orchard I don't know if I'd ever want to move!!!!

[bobleponge]

Thanks Jeannine. I will try that. The other house is empty so I may just dig up a couple now and plant them there anyway in case we do move, as we have so many of the things.
If that doesnt work, any ideas how long they take to bear fruit from a stone?
We have 2 copses of plums, around 10 per copse, and I have pulled up so many small saplings (small = under 3ft high) I've lost count, so they appear to be fairly prolific sprouters.
The fruit we have is fantastic but the house is fairly limited. With a couple of horses we need more land and this new place will also give me about an acre all to myself so I can plan a new garden right from scratch. I am excited already.

[ChocClare]

We have 2 copses of plums, around 10 per copse, and I have pulled up so many small saplings (small = under 3ft high) I've lost count, so they appear to be fairly prolific sprouters.

Hi Bob, no words of wisdom I'm afraid, and sorry to stick my question into your thread, but can I just ask you roughly how tall your (main) plum trees are and how far apart? I'm just about to plant some, and obviously I don't want them super-crowded but if yours have grown "as nature intended" then I'd be interested to know how close I can get away with planting them!

If the worst comes to the worst, do you need to grow a new tree from a stone? Can't you carefully dig up some of your small saplings and put them in pots to save time? Or have you already dug them all up and chucked them?

[bobleponge]

Hi ChocClare,
Our trees are in 2 copses, and both of them are very tightly bunched indeed. Probably no more than about 3 metres apart, if that. They are of differing sizes and my thoughts are that originally there were just a couple of trees in each location and they have just grown from dropped stones.
The small saplings have (sadly now I know the boss wants to move) been picked up, chipped and stuck in the compost. However when I get home at the end of the month I will have a look around the area and see if I can find a couple of small ones to pot up.
Good luck with your planting.

[jeannine]

OHMYGOD, I'd love an acre, no wonder you want to move.

If I had more room I wonder if it would cure me of my bad habit of always planting things too close together?

Best of luck with your new place, what a joy that you can start planting there already!

[ChocClare]

Just spotted this post again, Bob, thanks so much for replying. I am thinking of turning part of my garden into "an orchard" (anyone who's seen my garden falls over laughing at this point) - at the moment it's got an apple tree, a hugely overgrown flowering cherry which is to be pruned back by nice local expert man next week (thanks, Peter!!) and a (as far as I'm concerned) totally pointless other tree (I think it's a hornbeam) which goodness only knows why the last owners planted it there. So I have a plum, a cherry and a pear tree and thought I'd bung 'em all together in the bit that already has successful trees in it as it's south-facing. Hornbeam might ... succumb to something ... of course, as they're different trees I can't pretend they've just happened naturally, but I'll give it a go with slightly closer planting than I'd planned and see what happens - I seem to remember in my grandfather's orchard all the trees were pretty close together...

Thanks again!

[bobleponge]

ChocClare, no problems. Hope your plans work.
Jeannine, there is a down side to planting my baby plum trees there of course. If the sale doesnt go through then someone else will benefit. Still, I suppose thats not all bad.
If we do get it though, I shall be planning my acre garden for months before we actually do get in there.