Have Your Fruit Trees Disappointed?

[ladylottie]

Hi
I have a three year old Damson (Shropshire Prune) on an unknown rootstock. I had ordered a Merryweather but they sent me the Shropshire Prune instead. Last year I only had about 20 damsons from it.
This year despite lots of blossom, I can hardly see any fruit on it at all. The tree is almost 10 foot tall and I only have a small garden. I am very disappointed.

Would it be ok to prune it now, reducing the height and removing all crossing branches?

[BroadRipple]

it's miserable isn't it, when you only have space for one or two and then...nothing.
I'm still unsure whether to dig up the tree which looked dead this year, weeping softly as I go, and try another apple in that spot with more compost dug in, or whether I should abandon my dreams of a Lahndon brick wall adorned with fan-trained apples and try something else there, something easier [insert suggestions here] and try to grow apples or mebbe plums in containers instead. FB, you've been fantastically helpful re: varieties etc...what do you and others think about apples in containers? The foot-binding aspect bothers me, but they may be better than nothing, and nothing's what I got...I know we've been round and round with this one but basically I'm asking, or arxing as we say here: are apples in containers much less productive/more difficult to keep happy than apples ieach n a 0.5 square metre patch of soil at the base of a wall? and would plums (in which case, which plum?) be better in either situation?
come on grapes, it's over to you.
[God I love this site. Facebook, twitter, all dead to me. But emailing complete strangers about curcurbits in the dead of night...now that's what the interweave is for]