What do with an old plum tree

[peachang]

Hi

I've just taken on the allotment next to my friends and it has an older plum tree that has suckers all around it some of them up to three foot high. I'm informed the tree did not fruit last year. Is this because of all the suckers?? What would be the best cut the tree down and start again or keep trying to remove the suckers which is a nightmare as there are so many???

Many thanks

Angela

[chris]

It was probably down to the weather last year, I didn't get much fruit at all off my trees.. infact I didn't get any.

Is the tree grafted onto a rootstock? (is there a budge near to the bottom of the trunk?)

Remove the suckers anyway, keep the tree if it's healthy. Is it in leaf now? Is there any blossom / blossom that looks like it's died?

[zazen999]

Remove the suckers and just leave the tree do it's thing. Hardly any fruit trees cropped last year as the late frost and wet weather stopped much pollination.

[starloc]

Last year was bad for plums but it cant hurt to feed the tree as it will probably need a good feed

Plums like a lot of fertiliser, most people dont feed them and if they do only give a tiny amount , far less than they need.

Give it a good feed with sulphate of ammonia , about a cup full per inch of trunk diamiter spinkeled around the tree, that usualy gets them growing again, plum trees like high levels of nitrogen

[peachang]

I'm not sure if the tree is grafted I will have a look when I go tommorrow. I'm not sure if I used the correct terminology ie suckers the problem is the roots are growing small tree all over the plot!

The tree doesn't look overly healthy just very old. I will try to take some pictures and try feeding it as recommended by someone.

Many thanks

[peachang]

many thanks for this advice

[rustylady]

Suckers is the right term, but these usually grow from the base of the trunk and I've never known plums sucker far away from the trunk.

Are you sure they're growing from the plum tree roots?

[FB.]

Many plums are biennial croppers - a branch-breaking crop one year, followed by no crop the next year.
Blossom thinning (rather than fruitlet thinning) can help the situation, if you have the time to pick-off about one-third to one-half of the blossom buds in the bumper-cropping year.

Suckers should be relentlessly persecuted; removed the instant they are seen. Cutting them off at ground level will result in several suckers regrowing in the place of each one which was removed. Suckers need to be removed at their point of origin. A tree which has been allowed to build up the number and strength of the suckers is going to be virtually impossible to get back under control.

[zazen999]

I'm not sure if the tree is grafted I will have a look when I go tommorrow. I'm not sure if I used the correct terminology ie suckers the problem is the roots are growing small tree all over the plot!

The tree doesn't look overly healthy just very old. I will try to take some pictures and try feeding it as recommended by someone.

Many thanks

That's probably not from the roots; but from self seeded plums that nobody harvested 2-3 years ago.

[BathEd]

I've seen an old plum tree sucker vigorously from the root system, it does happen. It appeared to be on its own roots as the suckers produced the same type of plums as the parent tree. They appeared up to several metres from the main tree. Sometimes it can be triggered by root damage, but in this case I think it was because the main tree was diseased and weakened, which may have triggered the root system to sucker.

[FB.]

Dwarfing or semi-dwarfing rootstocks are often troublesome for suckering.
The dwarfing effect is usually achieved through partial incompatibility between the two pieces of the tree. This results in the two pieces not fully exchanging sap and nutrients between them, which causes bottlenecks at the graft - and often a swelling of the trunk at the graft.
Given the right conditions, the bottleneck can cause the tree to try to vent-out the bottled-up sap elsewhere.
Dwarf rootstocks may send up suckers, while the grafted part may produce knobbly primitive roots just above the graft (and this principle can be used to get a fruit tree on its own roots; graft to a dwarf rootstock and bury the graft several inches or more below ground).
The medium-vigour St.Julien A plum rootstock is semi-incompatible (so tends to sucker), as are the medium-vigour Quince A and Quince C pear rootstocks (which will also sucker), as is the semi-dwarf M26 apple rootstock and the dwarf M27 and M9.
When ungrafted (i.e. they don't have a piece on top which is semi-incompatible), St.Julien A and Quince rootstocks can be quite vigorous.

Suckering can be made worse by un-sympathetic pruning (timing and type of pruning of both suckers and the canopy of the tree can have an effect) and by mechanical damage to roots just below the surface.