Victoria Plum

[Whitespin]

Hi

Last autumn I bought a number of fruit trees from an established online nursery. All have done well despite the planting being interrupted by the frozen ground. One of the first to be planted, before the cold set in was a Victoria Plum on Pixie rootstock. It was already pruned as a half standard. It was late coming into leaf and only one branch out of five has had growth on it. The other four appear to be dead. I have not tried to check if they are for fear of silver leaf. The tree has now totally lost it's shape with just a few straggly twigs from where there was growth.

Has this tree any chance of recovering next year or should I try and get it replaced.

Thanks

[FB.]

Pixie rootstock is a very weak rootstock to be chosen for a half-standard.
Pixy is better suited to calming the vigour of the very vigorous plum varieties, or for average varieties on good fertile soil, or for containers.

I would prepare a replacement, but if you want a half-standard, you'll need at least "St.Julien A" rootstock for most soils - and if your soil is below average you may need an even stronger rootstock.

You don't mention your location, but perhaps your soil is poor, which is why a rootstock as weak as Pixy is failing to thrive.
In my early fruit-growing years, I seriously misjudged just how bad my soil was. In fact, my soil is so poor that nobody would believe me if I told them that even the weeds struggle to grow!
Eventually, I concluded that on my soil, everything reached about half the size of "the textbooks" and that I needed the most vigorous rootstocks just to grow a half-standard.

[Whitespin]

Hi FB thanks for your reply. I rang the supplier and they asked me to scrape a bit of the bark on the branches that had not produced any leaves. They said it should be on St Julian as a half standard and if there was no green showing when scraped they would replace it. I have just been out and tried it and there is no green so I will ring again tomorrow.

My soil is only a thin layer over a clay and sandstone bed. Before planting I dug in copious amounts of mushroom compost and some nice black soil. I also used bonemeal in the hole and infill. It was a very bad winter here with the ground frozen for months. However following your comments I will however feed all the top fruit in the spring.

Thanks

[rustylady]

Whitespin, I do hope you get a replacement tree. Whereabouts are you - you say you had a really bad winter. If you go to your profile you can edit it to show your location, and it will then show up on your posts - this helps no end when answering queries.

[Whitespin]

Hi Rusty Lady

I have done as suggested and updated my profile.

Thanks