Victoria Plum Tree

Hi Fleurs,Someone posted the other day saying that plums only crop every other year.i am a rank amateur,but read back through some comments i'm sure it'll help.

I know that RustyLady has a magnificent crop off her Victoria ... but this year, hardly any blossom at all.

Your tree is very young, and needs time to establish itself before it will flower and fruit regularly. Is it in a pot or in the open ground? Victoria turns into quite a large tree so is probably not suitable for pot growing.

thanks everybody for the reassuring answers

i have a vic plum tree, last year didn't have any fruit, this year we have loads, so i think its true they only fruit every other year, well mine do anyway x

My Victoria has fruited well every year since I moved into this little cottage. It had been totally butchered by either the landlord or the previous tenant, and has taken a little TLC to get into working order. Still a bit of pruning of dead wood to do. However, this spring it produced hardly any blossom (I blamed myself for letting it carry an enormous crop last year). Main point, however, is that although I had plums set from the few normal early spring blossoms the tree is now producing odd flowers here and there and they appear to be setting. Anyone got any ideas why? I've never experienced this with fruit trees before.

where to buy

been looking on the internet and gobsmacked by all the sites that sell this plum, where would everyone recommend to buy plum victoria cheers

Where to buy depends on what you want it for.
If it is going to be the centrepiece of a display of some kind, then you must hand-pick the tree, which means going to a local nursery and choosing the best one for yourself. But such trees are often more expensive than bare-rooted mail-order tree.

If you don't care about a nice-looking tree and want to save money, then buy mail-order.

Not many mail-order places offer fruit trees in summer. I can only think of:
> > Victoriana < <click
> >Chris Bowers < <click
> > Blackmoor < <click


Some people like the £7 bargains from various places, but it seems as if the rootstock is often not stated (so you don't know how big it will get) and the trees are not always "true to name".
Someone recently suggested that some of the discounters get their supplies from the left-over trees from other nurseries - anything left over is offered. The rootstock can be absolutely anything from the 8ft M26 to the 30ft M25.

Generally, I have found that the less I spent, the more likely that I was disappointed. The finest specimens that I have bought were container-grown stock from reputable garden centres.
I recently found some container-grown "maiden" fruit trees in a local garden centre - Scotsdales - for £10 each. They were bargains at the price; about 6ft tall, perfectly straight, strong roots.
I bought one because it was on the rare MM111 rootstock (vigorous) which I prefer. Since planting, it has thrived and is far outgrowing two "bare-root" M25 rootstocked trees (very vigorous).

Mail order has generally been disappointing for me - I think that the nurseries are too rough with the young trees when they dig them out of the ground and damage most of the roots. In my experience, only vigorous varieties and strong rootstocks seem to "establish" well.
Beware of "container grown" trees via mail-order. Many were simply dug out of the ground last winter and dumped into pots, rather than having been growing in the pot for a year or two. Therefore, they are much the same as bare-rooted trees.

I planted a bare root vic plum last year and think it must have been already dead! Gave it 6 months but replaced with a nice one with good shape from Homebase. Its doing fine but not expecting fruit til next year

If your quick and they have any left you could try. 4 dwarf trees for £29.98 = £6.95 postage.

4 Fruit Trees - Stella Cherry, Plum Victoria, Apple Braeburn and Pear Conference - IdealWorld

Mail order you take a chance, some good supliers, some not so good, at this time of year i would go to the garden center, see if you can find one with fruit on it growing in a pot, i wouldnt get a dormant one this time of year , its too hot to plant them they have no time to establish themselves before the heat of summer
If you need to go mail order or cant find one that looks good with fruit etc, then Blackmoor nurseries have supplied me with some nice trees mailorder all very healthy, i got ones growing in a pot and also in coir bag pots from them, both types are growing well and are a bit older than the bare rooted ones, i think the coir bag ones were best though

The cheapest and best time of year to get trees is really autumn/winter. It's the bare rooted season and Autumn's the best time to plant them. The ground is wet and still warm, the above ground parts are going dormant and all the action is beneath the ground. The plant spends all autumn and winter looking like it's doing nothing, but really it's growing it's roots.

My very limited experience with mail order bare rooted plants has been brilliant so far.

Last Autumn I got pear/apple/plum/hazel trees from online places and they've all done amazingly well so far. They're all very nice healthy plants and already I've got close to 100 apples developing on 4 of the apple trees and maybe 50 plums coming on one tree. I expect they'll probably drop a lot of them before they fully develop though.

Although having said that, they were relatively expensive family trees that I'd expect they'd take greater care with when extracting. And they're 2 years old, which would help with the fruiting. I also planted them with that fungus stuff that's supposed to extend their root system and allow plants to share nutrients and water, but I have no way of knowing whether it's made any difference.