Ripening Plums

[littlegreenman]

Hi guys, we have a couple of Victoria Plum trees in the garden, and sadly yesterday due to a combination of strong winds and sheer weight of the fruit two of the branches snapped.

There is probably around 600 plums on these two branches but obviously they are all still pretty green, is anything i can do to ripen these, or have i lost them.

Cheers

[Shadylane]

You could bring them inside or put a few in a fruit bowl and see but honestly I don't know. When we got plums on our inherited tree they were ready about now I think. They were still green in places. Give them a squeeze, if soft take a bite, if tasty, they're ripe

[littlegreenman]

Sadly there not close to being ripe quite yet, but will keep them inside and see what happens.

[FB.]

The plums are lost.
At the next opportunity, I suggest that you look carefully at the tree and consider if you can prune it to prevent further branch breakages in future years, which can also act as entry points for diseases - which Victoria is rather prone to.
Given your huge crop this year, you may well have only a very small crop next year anyway, so next spring may be a good time to tidy up the tree to minimise future problems.

Ideally, a fruit tree should be regularly pruned in its early years to guide its growth, which then makes a sturdy and efficient tree for an easy life in its later years as it starts to crop. Unfortunately, many people plant a tree, do no pruning at all and then wait until it gets too big before then try to prune it - with variable results because big trees can look very ugly after pruning.

[taff]

I did notice that when unripe plums fell off, or more likely, got knocked off the tiny plum tree, they ripened by themselves on the ground. Don't despair yet

[littlegreenman]

The plums are lost.
At the next opportunity, I suggest that you look carefully at the tree and consider if you can prune it to prevent further branch breakages in future years, which can also act as entry points for diseases - which Victoria is rather prone to.
Given your huge crop this year, you may well have only a very small crop next year anyway, so next spring may be a good time to tidy up the tree to minimise future problems.

Ideally, a fruit tree should be regularly pruned in its early years to guide its growth, which then makes a sturdy and efficient tree for an easy life in its later years as it starts to crop. Unfortunately, many people plant a tree, do no pruning at all and then wait until it gets too big before then try to prune it - with variable results because big trees can look very ugly after pruning.

We prune it most years, and last year we really cut it back, just gone crazy this year, its been like magic beans.

[chris]

Strange really, as you can buy the "ripen at home" ones.. sometimes we're delivered ones (just had some yellow ones - which were AMAZING) - grown in spain though unfortunately delivered which were green but had a note saying leave in your fruit bowl to ripen.

You can always rub out fruit buds if it's going to look like a heavy crop again, or sacrifice some that have set fruit in the future... Or support the branch

Our Victoria shifted towards biennial bearing before it was taken down... it wasn't pruned thuogh.

[FB.]

If a tree is too vigorous, it should be pruned in late winter-early spring, followed by a second prune in July.
The second prune removes excess growth from energy that was stored in the roots, so that the tree wont be able to quickly re-grow what was removed.
Most people seem to let a tree get too big and then panic-prune very hard only every few years when the tree is out of control.
I see all the time, trees which get one hard prune every several years and they end up with broom-like tufts of branches crowded at the ends of the branches where the pruning cuts were made. The trees usually become crowded, straggly and ugly. Had the pruning been followed by a second prune a few months later - to remove some of the crowded new shoots entirely and shorten the remainder - the tree could have been maintained in an attractive and structurally strong shape.

Hard pruning causes long, whippy new shoots and strong regrowth. The long soft shoots are also easily infected by disease; over-vigorous apples and pears in particular are magnets for canker, due to canker getting into the wounds on soft shoots caused by the point where the leaf was attached, when the leaves fall in autumn.
These long, whippy shoots should be cut back hard in July to permanently keep the tree small and manageable.
In other words: two pruning sessions will quickly bring a tree under control and get it back into fruiting.

[chris]

That was at my old mans place - he dug them out in the end. I'm not sure if they were on their own roots, as there were no graft joins visible, but by heck the roots on the plum, pear, and even the apple were massive. I mentioned the apple one before to you - huuuuuuuuuuuuuge long things

Just checked your post with the MM106/116 piccies - very very different to how these bad boys were

[FB.]

If the trees were old, they may well be on seedling roots or their own roots.
Seedlings produce massive taproots which can also act as a reservoir for nutrients and also for excellent anchorage.
However, the massive roots often don't have the mop-like structure of MM111. The mop-like structure makes MM111 highly efficient at gathering water and highly competitive for nutrients. It is comparably vigorous to M25, but tends to be a much more compact grower with plenty of branching, so looks like a smaller tree, when, in fact, it is simply that M25 is more open-shaped and sparsely-leaved and sparesely-branched.

MM111 also gets less stressed in a drought (which we get every year, in the East), so MM111 is less likely to panic, drop leaves, drop fruits and shut down. The "very vigorous" M25 roots may be much larger, but M25 is not nearly as efficient at gathering water and will also shut down relatively easily. Fortunately, M25 is somewhat quicker to restart growth after rainfall than MM106 which refuses to grow much new root unless the soil remains damp for several weeks.

Here's a picture of a one-year-younger M25 tree with big taproots:

[Mevvy]

Plums

The branch of my plum tree has snapped with the weight of the plums and the high winds. It is still attached to the tree and I am wondering if the plum will still ripen or should I pick them and hopethey might ripen on their own. Or maybe they are all lost. Help please