plum trees (forum)

martin starts with ...
fruit is dropping when immature and they have turned yellow

Time: 6th July 2009 4:49pm

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Jason says...
Hi Martin, How old is the tree we are talking about?

Time: 6th July 2009 7:57pm

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Itdepends says...
If you're in the southern hemisphere your plums shouldn't be fruiting yet. Quite a few people have had the trees flower in autumn this year (instead of spring) due to unseasonably warm weather (including me). The fruit don't last the winter and will drop off.

You shouldn't see flowers (normally) until spring- with fruit maturing from Christmas onwards depending on the variety.

Daniel

Time: 9th July 2009 2:09pm

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martin says...
Thanks Daniel & Jason. The tree is 9 or 10 years old (Two-Way Plum 'Santa Rosa" & 'Satsuma'). We have always had wonderful fruit between Christmas and New Year but this last year was different - maybe our drought but we did water it regularly. Flowered normally and heaps of fruit formed but the majority stopped growing at about pea size, turned yellow and fell off. What fruit remained was normal. What should we feed it? Thanks again Martin

Time: 9th July 2009 6:54pm

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Itdepends says...
A couple of kilos of low nitrogen fertiliser in late winter/early spring. (By low nitrogen- I just mean not one that is 20% nitrogen and only 5-10% potassium or phosphorous).

Sounds like what happened to you though was either poor pollination (no bees around) or lack of water- probably lack of pollination.

Try leaving a dish of water with a rock in it for the bees to have a drink and encourage them into your garden with plants flowering at the same time as plums (lavender is pretty good). Plum blossum doesn't contain a lot of nectar- so it's not particularly attractive to bees.

Cheers,

Daniel

Time: 11th July 2009 11:49am

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