Grow Your Own Magazine

We have a huge plum tree in our garden... (about 10-12 ft tall)

The inaccessible plums at the top are rip and keep falling off and splatting on the ground

The plums on the reachable branches, however, are still green, and some seem to be rotting without turning ripe

I'm not sure what kind of plums they are, as they are not deep purple when ripe, but a very nice "sunset" colour (orange/peachy/red)...

We were wondering if we had some sort of virus/bug on our lower branches that is eating the plums?

I had visions of making plum jam, but now they are all squished on the floor (and the puppy keeps bringing them into the house to eat on the carpet)



Squished on the floor


Mostly unripe, yet with a totally rotten one on


Another with brown bits on

There are various reasons why your plums could be doing this. The first is Plum sawfly. This is rather like the worm one finds in apples. The infected fruit drops early, or is unusable. We use the Pheromone traps in April/May to reduce the problem. If the plums rot on the br\bches and go sort of 'brown' then that is Brown rot. Remove as many of the plums affected and burn or bin, do not compost. The weather itself could also be a problem. Our trees are sufffering from lack of water both at the roots and in the atmosphere. The fruit is not ripening properly and since the skin has set and now we hve had rain, it is splitting and that allows in all sorts of nasties.
You can pick the fruit before it is ripe and allow to ripen in the house. We picked our greengages when they were still hard otherwise the blue tits get them all. They have ripened enough now to be jammed.

Ripening but with funny brown bits on...



Totally unripe - Argh!

Any chance you could try to resize the picture OGW?

__________________
Shortie

"There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children; one of these is roots, the other wings" - Hodding Carter

Eek! Not sure how...

Any chance of help from a moderator??

Give me a mo....

__________________
Shortie

"There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children; one of these is roots, the other wings" - Hodding Carter

I can't seem to change them myself as I don't have the originals to repost so I'm afraid it needs to eb done your side sorry...

Best way is using the attached: Please read before posting


A bit of a cop-out I know to post this link but I couldn't think of a better way to describe it

Any problems using this, give me a shout, I've used it a few times and it seems pretty good software, especially as a freebie!

__________________
Shortie

"There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children; one of these is roots, the other wings" - Hodding Carter

Hi OWG,

Firstly the resize problem. I use a little utility thats frr to down load & is really easy to use called Photo resize. You can download it from here, save it somewhere & then if you rename it too PhotoResize700 or 800 it's about right

http://www.rw-designer.com/picture-resize.

As to your plum problem, not an expert on Plums but I know the are v.vigourous trees, & they look a bit congested in there. It's too late to do anything now but next spring/early summe I'd look to take some of the branches out so that it is more open & has a better air flow through that may heelp with some of the problems. Also even though you get June drop it's still woth taking some of hte excess fruit of the tree as it can't all mature especially if we have another year like this year with high temps & no rain.

It won't cure the probs but it may help them.

__________________
ntg

Never be afraid to try something new.
Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark.
A large group of professionals built the Titanic

http://grief-encounters.blogspot.com/