Persnickety Pluot

[Lady BlackThumb]

This Pluot has been in my garden for 3 summers now, and every year it does the same old rubbish. Blooms beautifully, sprouts some buds, and then the tree spends the rest of the growing season with half-@rsed, curly, semi diseased/unhappy looking leaves. Its growing lots of limbs/sprouty shoots the fastest out of all the fruit trees in my garden.

This year it bloomed while i was out of the country, and i cam back to clusters of crispy brown flower clusters.

I water, feed, no grass around the roots. What am I doing wrong? Or are pluots just a crappy choice for the British climate? I'm sick of this tree looking like the aftermath of a Glastonbury campsite all year long and producing no fruit in my small garden (every inch counts!)

[ameno]

Flowers but no fruits is likely to be one of two things:
1) you had a frost while the blossoms were out, which killed the flowers (although if this were the case, one would still expect at least a few to survive and produce fruit, just a much reduced number. Did you say you have no fruit at all?)

or 2) Lack of pollination partner. Pluots are either not self-fertile or only very weakly self-fertile (depending on variety), so in order to get fruit you need to have another pluot or cherry-plum (Prunus salicina. Also known as Japanese Plum. Not an actual cherry, nor the same species as most plum trees you can buy in this country, which are Prunus domestica) tree nearby which flowers at the same time to cross-pollinate it,

Assuming you indeed don't have a pollination partner for you tree (which unless you are growing one yourself is unlikely, as neighbours are unlikely to have one), then if you want fruit you will probably have to buy another tree yourself, either a pluot or Prunus salicina (if you buy another pluot, it must be a different variety to the one you already have).

As for the curly leaves and stems, that will be leaf curl aphid. A common pest of plums and cherries. A mild to moderate infestation can safely be ignored; it looks bad but does no real harm. A severe infestation can stunt the new growth, so in those cases it may be worth spraying (just once is usually enough, I find).

[Lady BlackThumb]

ameno thanks for the advice. It's a Flavour Supreme pluot, which when i bought off the nursery it claimed to be self fertile (i was willing to risk lower yields). But till this day i have never seen a single fruit, not even a teeny tiny baby one forming from the flowers.

I'll give it one more year and see what happens next year. Might give the thing a bit of a spray for the curl aphids. Thanks for the advice.

[ameno]

If you've had plenty of flowers but never even a single fruit then lack of pollination caused by self-sterility is almost certainly the reason.
I find even after hard frosts at least a few blossoms survive and still produce fruit, so no fruit at all must be caused by something more fundamental.
Although out of interest, when does your tree normally flower and what part of the country are you?

[Lady BlackThumb]

ameno sometime in march, according to the photos on my phone. And im in the surrey area.

Today i found apparently Flavour Supreme is the most finicky variety of pluot. FML talk about gardeners regret.