Pruning a Plum Tree for Better Shape and Production

A friend's father-in-law needed some work done in his orchard so I volunteered. This plum tree should do quite well after this winter pruning.

[baddriversofcolga]

I love using loppers, and it's fun cutting branches. The hard part is deciding on what to prune, but even that's not that bad. Also, in other news one of my 6 peach trees from pits is putting on flower buds for the first time! Very exciting.

[tommymckiddy]

I got my hands dirty in the garden today. It felt awesome. I also got 3 of your books from Amazon delivered. Awesome day. I can't wait to read them.

[coolmantoole]

I have a home plum orchard in SE Georgia as a side gig. (It's by far the easiest fruit to sell in my area!) I totally agree that the tree needed pruning, and it looks like you did a good job with it. However, if a plum tree that size and healthy looking isn't producing any fruit, my first thought would be to consider a pollination issue. From the looks of that tree's growth habit and branches it could well either be a Chickasaw cultivar or a hybrid with a lot of Chickasaw plum in its genetic makeup. None of them that I'm aware of are self-fertile, and many of them have either very little or very weak pollen. Furthermore, I don't see another plum tree in the camera's field of vision, but there could well be one behind it. If there is no other plum tree within easy flying distance of a bee, that's a fundamental cause of the lack of productivity that pruning will never overcome. However, if there is another plum tree in the yard, and it's also either a Chickasaw cultivar or a hybrid with lots of chickasaw in it, it may not be producing enough viable pollen to make the tree you are working on fruitful. The pollenizers of Chickasaw cultivars and hybrids are wild-type Chickasaw plum trees. If you want to test this, the next time your plum trees bloom, go find a thicket of blooming wild plums. Put a bunch of blooming branches in a five-gallon bucket of water under the tree. If you have bees and the flowers don't get yacked by a late frost, the tree will set fruit, assuming pollination was the issue.

[shanemillard]

Haha. You're doing what I have been doing - going to other peoples trees and pruning their trees to help them bear fruit. And like you said "I'm not doing anymore" are famous misstatements to anyone that has a saw or loppers and is working on pruning trees

[johnnyroadcrew]

I laughed out loud when you said "when youve got loppers everything looks like a branch" good job.

[matthewkizziahcuzia...gott]

I find myself at work explaining plant stuff to customers and more often now I catch myself sounding like you. Not a bad thing.

[Ferrat]

I do love that your fruit trees are waking up, and mine are preparing to go to sleep.

[jameswardlaw-bailey]

The moose helped prune my plum trees last week (and apple tree and current bushes...)

[hughbrackett]

🎼🎶Wake up 'lil plumb tree
Wake up!🎶

[garden_geek]

Yikes, I've been lopping branches off too close to the parent branch. Won't make that mistake anymore, thank you for the tip!

[garyjohnson]

I had a plum tree and it was a low chill plum for 7 years and it was open center had plenty of blooms but never produced any plums with full sun. Now my Daughter has it and it's 8 years old and still no plums

[BigCountry]

This is the perfect time of year to also cut back a lot of the red colored shoots, that is the new growth. Plums will not produce on those red shoots, only leaves. Plums only set fruit on 2 year or older growth. So basically, it's cutting back on the suckers. Only leave the ones where you want to promote growth to shape your tree. Yesterday I had to prune a plum WAY back because it was the first time the 5 or 6 year old tree had been pruned. Thanks for sharing!

[GypsyBrokenwings]

David, I had 2 plum trees that size that didn't give fruit. One day I was watching gardening with Cisco and he said take a baseball bat to your fruit tree and give it a couple good wacks. It makes the tree think you're going to cut it down. What did I have to loose? So I went out and smacked both of them really good. That year I had plums like crazy on BOTH trees.

[PaleGhost]

Instructions unclear, ended up with a prune tree

[dougatfuto]

looked like a big tree, are there any fruiting spurs? maybe some heading cuts?

[benjaminbroudy]

Could you do "The Great Rooting Experiment" where you take cuttings from tons of different species (plums, apples, pears, anything else you can find) and then try to root them with different methods? Thank you! (And please Lord forgive me for my sins. I shall attempt not to steal cuttings again from my school's tree)

[Homegardener]

Depending on what variety that is you may never get fruit with just one tree, most plum varieties need a second tree of a different variety for cross pollination, when you did the close up of the branch to show a proper cut it appears that you have fruiting spurs, which is how plums fruit so I think adding another tree of a different variety would make it fruit.

[zaneymay]

Anytime you want, come over and help by food forest. 😁

[oldrooster]

You have done very good job, thank you!! Very nice video! I'm from Croatia and i am wondering what kind of plum varietyes do you have? From all videos i have found i can see that in Europe we don't have the same varietyes like you in the US... Maybe you could make video about your plums when they have fruit on them and show us how they look and taste like... Just an idea... But thanks again, this is awsome video!

[SweetLoveTarot]

Hello David, I am not faint of heart when it comes to pruning but I am faced with a very sad little apple tree. It has had all of the bark eaten off of one side of the tree. However hope springs eternal. There are a couple of branches clinging to life and one more that had been cut in half that has several new sprouts near the ground. it doesn't appear to be below a graft either! I feel sure I can revive this little tree if I provide some protection from browsing deer. My question is, do I clean up the new sprouts opting for a strong new start and leave the other two branches (with a little judicious pruning) to limp along till I get something more established or do I show no mercy and chop it down to the new start? Note this little tree is 27 years old and I worry that if I am too drastic it will shock it into giving up for good. I welcome your advice.