Planting a victoria plum tree

Hi, I’m new to this! A couple of questions;

First - location: The maximum amount of sunshine in any given spot in my garden is about 4-5 hours (because of surrounding high trees) - will this be sufficient for getting a good crop?

Second - securing a healthy crop: what should I do (and when) to protect the crop (please advise product names for any sprays etc)?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

KJ

 

Situation sounds OK. Prune young ones in June and established trees in April. Thin out bunches of young plums sad but you have to give the remainder room to expand. Do not let it grow further than you can reach. It can become very expensive to buy all the necessary sprays (find them all on your search engine) I just let my three get on with it. I find you get one year of good cropping and the next year very poor. Keep the surrounding ground weed free. Good luck.

 

I don’t know if this is true in every case but the best plum tree I ever saw was growing wild on an old derelict building site. It had once been in somebody’s garden but had been left to grow, unmolested by secateurs and sprays for many years. It had suckered in every direction without any harm to the parent plant. Every year it was covered in the most delicious fruit. My parents, on the other hand, had a plum tree which they faffed and fiddled about with and every year it was covered in (a) ravenous birds and (b) insatiable wasps. We hardly ever got one clean, edible plum off it. All the kids of the neighbourhood could be found sitting under the “wild” tree in July and August.

 

Thanks for both replies - really helpful. One more question, if I may;

The tree is “standard” in size with St. Julien A rootstock (not fully sure what that means!) and the top of the longest branch is about 10 feet tall. The tree looks healthy with leaves but no flowers and will be planted in my garden this week. When am i likely to get the first crop of fruit?

 

Depends where you live but there should have been blossom on it by now. Probably next year for fruit. Personally I would reduce the height.

 

Rootstocks are the bit of the tree that is rooted in the ground. The variety, in your case Victoria, is grafted onto the rootstock. If you look, you will see a knobbly lump on the stem where they are joined just above the soil. The rootstock is not Victoria, it is another type of tree in the plum family. The rootstock governs how big the tree will be, what type of soil it will thrive in, and other factors. It’s important not to let suckers belonging to the rootstock grow out of that part as it may take over from the Victoria part. Here is an interesting article about plum trees.

Plum Trees - Growing Methods & Rootstocks - Chris Bowers & Sons

 

Thanks again for your respones.

 

We have 2 so named Victoria plums. One of them most definitely is not. However we have had a great harvest for some years from it. This year the flowers were all over the tree and then.......the pigeons started on taking the new growth followed by the tree now looking very dead (not blaming the pigeons). We have noticed "new" growth which is very strong. So this is coming from the root stock. We will leave it and see if we get damsons/bullace fruit next year.