Plum/Apple trees

[Mr Potato Head]

On my recently acquired allotment I have inherited 3 plum trees (the neighbour says they are plum, they are not carrying any fruit so I take his word for it) and a small apple tree.

I was wondering a couple of things. Firstly do I need to do anything to help the trees thrive next year, such as feeding or digging anything in around the base and secondly, are there any problems to be aware of if I wanted to plant some bulbs around the trees?

[FB.]

I would leave them as they are.
During the winter, tidy up damaged or crowded branches on the apple tree.
In the spring, just as the plum trees begin to come out of dormancy, tidy up any damaged branches on the plums.

If you feed them too much nitrogen, they will grow strongly and not fruit.
The current lack of fruit might be saying that the soil is too rich, although the lack of fruit might simply be due to the frosty spring killing the flowers, or plums natural tendency to biennial bearing.

I don't see a problem with growing things around the base (I have spring bulbs or grass around some of my fruit trees), but take care that any tools/mowers/strimmers that you might use don't damage the bark near to ground level.

A bit of competition for a tree is useful to put it under a little stress - stress is what causes older trees to produce bumper crops of high-qualit fruit.

[Mr Potato Head]

Thanks FB, that is very helpful.

[Mr Potato Head]

I spoke to another neighbour about the trees and they said that in 3 years they had never seen them bear fruit, which is a bit worrying.

[FB.]

They are probably not bearing fruit because:

1.
The soil is so rich that they've decided to grow into massive trees before bothering to fruit.

2.
They have never been properly trained or pruned.

3.
They may be very vigorous varieties, or random seedlings that someone planted.

4.
They may need a pollinator. Despite there being a handful of plum trees, if they are the same variety of plum, it is like asking a single tree to pollinate itself because they are all clones of the same variety.

5.
Maybe their lack of fruit is because they catch late frosts which kill the blossoms. Plums are very early flowering which means a high risk of frost while in bloom.

My suggestion is to not feed, not water, grow something around them to steal their nutrients and use very hard summer pruning (prune back to an inch length, the soft green shoots in late July). Keep hitting them with a very hard summer prune and they'll start fruiting after a year or two.
That combination is sure to bring the mightiest growing tree into line, by shocking them, which will then result in them producing large amounts of blossom and fruit within a couple of seasons.

[Mr Potato Head]

1.
The soil is so rich that they've decided to grow into massive trees before bothering to fruit.

Possibly, the soil around them does look very good.

2.
They have never been properly trained or pruned.

They are fairly compact and tidy looking, if that is any indicator although a neighbour thinks that the previous plot holder didn't do anything to them.

3.
They may be very vigorous varieties, or random seedlings that someone planted.

Very possible.

4.
They may need a pollinator. Despite there being a handful of plum trees, if they are the same variety of plum, it is like asking a single tree to pollinate itself because they are all clones of the same variety.

There are other plum trees fairly close by that are fruiting very heavily.

5.
Maybe their lack of fruit is because they catch late frosts which kill the blossoms. Plums are very early flowering which means a high risk of frost while in bloom.

They are in quite an exposed position so that could be a contributing factor.

My suggestion is to not feed, not water, grow something around them to steal their nutrients and use very hard summer pruning (prune back to an inch length, the soft green shoots in late July). Keep hitting them with a very hard summer prune and they'll start fruiting after a year or two.
That combination is sure to bring the mightiest growing tree into line, by shocking them, which will then result in them producing large amounts of blossom and fruit within a couple of seasons.

Thanks again FB. I will try that next summer. Just a shame I missed the opportunity to start this year.