Plum Tree Help

[Garden_Chris]

Hi everyone,

I'm seeking a bit of help regarding a plum tree that I've owned/been 'responsible' for for nearly 8 or so years that has been fairly neglected for the duration of that time.
I've written a list of information about the tree to provide an overview of what its history is (I feel like I'm writing about a puppy up for adoption!)

• The variety of the tree is 'Blue Tit' and it is on Pixy rootstock.
• It has never flowered fully. In its 2nd/3rd year (the tree being about 5/6 at the time) it had 1 or 2 flowers. Nothing else, ever.
• It is - at least - 8 years old. It could be nearer to 10+ as when I purchased it it was roughly 3 years old, perhaps older. This is only a guess on my part though.
• It has lived in a pot (pictured) all of its life.
• It had had the same compost with no fertiliser added for 8 years.

I began a series of restorative actions this spring (May) with the intention of bringing it back to life to bring about a fruitful tree:

• A few branches had died, they easily snapped off and were brown with no green beneath the surface bark. I did properly cut these using a pair of sterilised secateurs.
• I've cut it back to the height shown and the resultant green growth has come from branches which were trimmed back to roughly 10/15cm in length from mid-May.
• I've repotted the entire tree in John Innes no.3 and have applied Fish, Blood and Bone every five weeks since the repotting to provide it with a bit of a boost.

My questions are:

1. How can I encourage it to fruit next year?
2. What are some tell-tale signs of buds being prepared to fruit?
3. What pruning methods should I follow to encourage fruiting next year?
4. Is there anything else you all would recommend I do to bring about fruits?
5. Anything else you think I should know / do to keep the tree healthy.

Thanks in advance!

Chris

[Garden_Chris]

[burnie]

Never tried it, looking on the 'tinternet, the advice looks very confusing, one advises not using soil to pot the plants and another says use it, fruit trees tend to be hungry and I have no idea how productive a tree would be in a container, the apple trees I have seen seem to offer a very small crop hardly worth growing, I suspect a Plum might be the same.

[bramble]

Hi Chris, * have a plum tree which is about 10 years old.
I have it growing in a half barrel.
I dont do anything specifically with it, It puts out lots of blossom in early spring each year and produces a reasonable crop,
I feed it with whatever I have be it blood fish and bone or tomorite.
I give it lots of water especially in a dry spell.
It is growing in a south westerly aspect.
Hope this helps.

[ameno]

I would suggest that that pot is radically too small. Even for a Pixy rootstock you want one at least four times that size. It wants to be in a largely soil-based potting mix.
You should give it a good top dressing of general feed (blood, fish and bone, growmore or poultry manure) twice a year (once it about February or March, and again in around late June), and when it is bearing fruit give it a high-potash liquid feed (like tomato feed) fortnightly or more. You should also mulch it every spring, ideally with garden compost or well-rotted manure, but any mulch will do.

Also, hard pruning of plums is not conducive to fruiting. They fruit around 70% on spurs formed on old growth and around 30% at the base of the previous year's growth. Therefore, if you want to restrict a plum tree's size without removing fruiting wood, in around early August each year you should shorten all current year's growth by between 30% and 90%. Any dead wood should be removed at this time, also. Die-back is common in Prunus species, and a small amount is nothing to be too concerned about.

It is impossible to tell fruit buds from leaf buds on a plum until they start swelling in the spring (flower buds start swelling sooner, and become rounder as they do so, whereas leaf buds remain pointy).

In all probability, the reason it hasn't been flowering is because it is too small still. And the reason it is too small is because the pot it is in/has been in is too small, and because it hasn't been sufficiently fed, and quite possibly not sufficiently watered.

[nickdub]

Ameno has given you excellent advice for growing this tree in a container.

However, if it was mine and assuming I was allowed to, I would cut a hole in the decking where the tree is positioned, dig a decent sizes hole for it and plant it in the ground. Growing fruit in containers gives you about 25% of the possible crop for about 10x the work, compared with just planting in the ground.