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Has anyone grown plums or green gages from seeds ? the reason I ask is when I came away from my allotment today I noticed a 6 small plants growing under my niegbours green gage tree that hangs over my plot would they be viable and how long would they take to produce fruit ? atb Dal.
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I brought some plum seeds back from Latvia 2 years ago (they were late season and v tasty ) and germinated about 6 of them. I planted them out this winter to grow on, currently about 18" high.
I'm unsure how long they'd take to get from now to fruiting size - a guesstimate would be a minimum of 5 years - the only practical way to shorten that would be to take buds from them this year and graft them on to a different root-stock - if it worked you might get fruit in 3 years or so - if I can be bothered and think about it at the right time - I might give it a go.
I like growing trees and shrubs from seed, but it does require a fair bit of patience before you see any results. On the other hand the plants mostly look after themselves, so you don't need to provide much apart from time.
BTW I expect some more scientific literature on how new varieties of fruit have been grown and tested would give you better info on timelines from a planted seed to new fruit etc. -
Wild plums can grow massive, and thorny
I've inherited a "Victoria" that appears to be grafted onto blackthorn - cheap for the grower, far from ideal for the small gardenAll gardeners know better than other gardeners." -- Chinese Proverb.Comment
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thanks guys its just that you don't see many green gage trees for sale, i'll have to be content with plucking a few when nobodys lookin lol . atb DalComment
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Greengage and damsons seed quite readily round here and are quite quick growing and fruit at quite a young age. I bought a plum tree probably about 6 years ago and have had about 6 plums off it. But some self seeded greengage trees have been bent double with fruit since. I had been going to cut them down when I first noticed them but didn't get round to it and now I'm glad I didn't. So if there are young trees there, I would move a couple to where you want them now and I would have thought you should get fruit by 2022, bit like a new asparagus bed.Comment
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Don't bother is my advice. After five years or so you will end up with a large tree with plums that are inedible.
After ten years you will be chopping the tree down becasue it has grown so large you can't even reach the inedible plums.Comment
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It certainly possible that this will be the outcome, but its also possible that luck will mean you get a good new fruit variety - after all this is how all the varieties we like now such as Victoria first came to be bred.Originally posted by TrialAndError View PostComment
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