quick damson question....

[Liz 89]

i've got a damson cutting that i potted up about a week ago. before i put it in the pot i stripped all the leaves and stuff off it like it says to do in all the magazines and stuff. well i've looked at it today and there's a flower grown on it and another 2 buds just about ready to open into flowers. surely the cutting couldn't have rooted already?? and is it could have, surely no fruit can be produced from this flower? so what do i do with it? shall i pull it off? so that the cuttings energy is put into growing instead of producing flowers and fruit? the cutting is only about 25cm long!. thanks for any help xxxx

[Tam]

Yes, strip the blossom off. Good luck with the cutting, I've only propagated top fruit by grafts.

[FB.]

Flowers and fruit are a severe drain on the resources of the plant (or cutting, in your case). When I plant a new fruit tree/bush etc, I remove all blossoms for at least the first growing season and often for the first two seasons.

I'd be surprised if your cutting "takes". Cuttings often look promising for a while, but eventually just stop doing anything and gradually wither. It's hard to keep them damp enough to prevent them drying out, while at the same time, trying to avoid fungal rots due to the dampness required to keep a cutting alive for the very long rooting time required for tree fruits.

You will also find that on the small chance that your cutting does "take", it will be an "own root" tree, which can be very strong growing and take many years to fruit.

Like Tam, I would also recommend grafting - buy an appropriate rootstock (or several) from a reputable nursery. Ungrafted rootstocks only cost a couple of pounds each.
I think that St Julien A (medium vigour; 12ft) and Pixy (low vigour; 8ft) are the main rootstocks that would interest you.

FB

[Liz 89]

yeah, i've been hearing alot about rootstocks, and have NO idea what they are, how to use them, why they are used, etc.... help!! thanks for any help xxxx

[daylily]

I would not worry Liz! It might take longer than you thought - I have never done damson - but quite a few Prunus species do root well.

Rootstock is roots of a different tree that your chosen one is grafted onto, sort of surgery, to grow into each other to have your chosen fruit with desirable other features, like size, disease resistance, whatever else.

Damsons however are hardy, reasonably disease free and rather a small tree, if not a shrub, themselves are used as a dwarfing rootstock.

Just take the flowers off and look after it and see what happens.

Worth noting though, you never ever take just ONE cutting of anything. And do leave some leaves on, please!

[FB.]

yeah, i've been hearing alot about rootstocks, and have NO idea what they are, how to use them, why they are used, etc.... help!! thanks for any help xxxx

In simple terms.....

A rootstock is a specific variety of the plum/apple/pear tree that is selected for the special features that it has; mature size, disease resistance, early fruiting and so on.

After it goes dormant for the winter, you get the rootstock tree and cut it's top off, a few inches above the ground.
Then, you cut a twig off your favourite tree and graft the twig (termed "scion") onto the rootstock.
Next spring, the rootstock and scion will have healed and the rootstock will now channel it's growth energy into the twig (scion) from your tree.


The following is what I have been doing with apples for a while now (just to experiment).


If you just want to have fun and experiment at no cost, plant a few pips from fruits of your tree in pots and leave them out in the garden over winter (they need a winter chill to encourage germination next spring).

Grow the pips next year - up to half may die, so don't be surprised.

When they go dormant for the winter, cut off the pips to 1" above ground with a sloping cut.
Cut some twigs off you favourite tree. They should be relatively young growth and only need to be an inch or two in length.
Join the twigs to your chopped-off pips and seal the join with tape.
The following season, the pips will channel their energy into the grafts from your old tree.
Now here's the clever bit....
In late spring (May), re-pot the pips into much deeper pots, so that the graft join is at least two inches BELOW the surface.
Your grafted pieces should then start to produce their own set of roots, just below the surface.
In mid summer (July), take the plants out of their pots and cut off the roots that belong to the pip and only retain the roots that your twig has produced.
Re-plant your twigs so that their roots are a couple of inches below the surface. Having lost most of their roots, they will need lots of watering and may lose quite a few leaves due to water stress. Some will die.

The survivors will be "own root" versions of your original tree - the same result as having taken a cutting, but with a much higher success rate.

FB.

[Liz 89]

wow, it all sounds very complicated indeed. this is my first year of growing ANYTHING on a serious level (tried last year and year before but started too late and didn't have much success) so this coming january onwards i will be seriously trying again. everyone in my family is going to have their baths and greenhouses filled with my seed trays! haha, not really, but i do want to grow alot. maybe i'm being too ambitious too fast.... i'll just see what happens to my cuttings for now i think.... thanks for all the help.

[grannysmith]

[QUOTE=FB.;277857I think that St Julien A (medium vigour; 12ft) and Pixy (low vigour; 8ft) are the main rootstocks that would interest you.FB[/QUOTE]

HI FB

Sorry if this is a really stupid question, but I'm sort of new to the fruit tree thing too. What, exactly, is "low vigour"? Does it just refer to the height and spread? I mean, it doesn't have anything to do with the hardiness of the tree, does it?

Thanks in advance for being patient. I should have a big "L" plate for my avatar instead.

[HeyWayne]

This is one damson in distress I have no hope of helping.

[FB.]

HI FB

Sorry if this is a really stupid question, but I'm sort of new to the fruit tree thing too. What, exactly, is "low vigour"? Does it just refer to the height and spread? I mean, it doesn't have anything to do with the hardiness of the tree, does it?

Thanks in advance for being patient. I should have a big "L" plate for my avatar instead.

Hardiness caused by different rootstock in most parts of the UK is not worth worrying about, but more vigorous plants will usually have much better tolerance to poor growing conditions, such as; poor soil, structural damage, drought or disease.

"Low vigour" means that the amount of growth each year, is less than average. "Medium vigour" would mean a plum tree that grows an average amount each year. Essentially, they control the size of the tree, making it more appropriate for the situation that you intend to grow it.

The average size for Pixy Rootstock (low vigour) is about 7ft height and spread.
For St Julien A (medium vigour), the size is about 10ft.

Obviously, any pruning that the tree receives will also affect the size.

In poor, dry soil, size can be reduced by up to half.
In good, moist soil (but not waterlogged!), size can be increased by half.

The variety grafted onto the rootstock also influences the tree size and strength. Like humans, some varieties are much bigger than others.
Victoria is about average.

FB

[grannysmith]

Once again, FB, thanks for this!!!! I get the idea you've been doing this for some time?

I'll bear this in mind. Our soil is fairly dry (no joke, I don't mean the weather here, but I mean the soil itself!) and fairly poor quality without the addition of bonemeal, potash etc. This is because we are what is called "Greensand" and also because we have trees from surrounding properties and parks heavily draining our soil of moisture and nutrients. One is a redwood, actually, and many are conifers, sycamores etc. They are not on our property directly and should not unduly affect the light (we are having some topped and all overhang removed next February), but all the same, the proximity of the trees does affect the soil.

I don't want a huge tree (e.g. 6 meters high by 20 feet across) but I would like a small but well-nourished one. In the spring, I was going to add potash at the beginning of the season and maybe compost. Again, this is really just to encourage growth in poor soil conditions.

Thanks again for everything you've said. It's really a huge help. I know it sounds silly thinking so much about a plum tree in such detail, but I am quite attached to the idea of having plums from it one day.

[FB.]

My soil is also quite poor. I live in one of the lowest-rainfall parts of the UK and have a sand/gravel subsoil at 15-18 inches depth.
With such free drainage and low rainfall, that anything grafted onto even remotely dwarfing rootstocks just won't grow at all.
I my area, the "low-vigour" Pixy rootstock is pointless without almost daily watering and even the "medium vigour" St. Julien A rootstock struggles to establish - my Victoria/St.J.A. is several years old, yet is less than 6ft in height and spread and manages only 4-6 inches of growth a year. In most areas of the UK, it would probably be 10ft by now.

FB.

[grannysmith]

Crumbs, FB, does anything help yours to counter the natural disadvantages of soil etc? I mean, potash or bonemeal or anything?

At the moment, I'm jubilant because it is getting some actual sun. All the same, if I did want to take a cutting from it to root, as per the original question above, I'll wait awhile first, but how long should I wait do you think?

The good news is, I can manage daily watering for one tree, but to be honest, we don't need to at the moment, because we are getting more rain than you can imagine lately. Still, I'll definitely keep an eye on it next spring and see how it does. As I said, the main problem we have is with giant trees on neighbouring properties.

[FB.]

I think that with your plum cutting, either:
1.
It'll dry out and be obviously dead within a few weeks.
2.
It'll open some buds and look like it's hanging on, but then it will stall, and then very slowly deteriorate, until it dies after a few months.

You'd have slightly more chance of success if the pot with the cutting has it's base in permanent shallow water, plus the top of the pot completely wrapped in a plastic bag to retain humidity. Keep it indoors.

You'd have a good chance of success by growing a plum pip and then grafting a piece of your Victoria onto that. But plum pips can produce very large trees that are difficult to prune or pick and may take a long time to fruit.
There is a plum tree grown from a pip in a car park near to me. I reckon that it's not more than 15 years old, but it's probably 20ft tall already, despite the poor growing conditions here!
You could plant a number of plum pips (they need winter cold to germinate) and then choose one of the smaller one's to graft onto. That should keep the tree manageable.

I still think that it'll be very difficult to grow a cutting (I have tried many times in the past, but with no success). By all means experiment with cuttings, but grafting, or even buying a new tree, would be much less time and hassle.

I could take several steps to try to improve growing conditions, but they'd be a lot of hard work and would need to be done regularly.
....add some moisture retention properties to the soil.
....set up an irrigation system.

But I believe that the plants should fend for themselves and it doesn't cost me any more money (or time) to buy (or graft) an apple/pear/plum on a vigorous rootstock as it would on a dwarfing rootstock. The vigorous rootstock boosts the growth rate to what would be considered normal in most parts of the UK.

[grannysmith]

Thanks, FB. Very helpful once again!