In a month or so, we're going to be cutting down our plum tree. It's the second one we're removing, and we're taking it out for the same reason. It's growing shoots out of the root stock's roots. This is the tree that was sold to me as an Apricot by the now defunct Garden Centre chain, White Rose. I waited 6 years to find out that it was a prune plum. It yielded well for a few years, and then due to any number of possible combinations of factors, it's dwindled to virtually nothing. Off with it's head! It will give us some nice firewood.
I cut it way back, so that the tomatoes it shades in the early evening would get more light. Now that I've cut the tree way way back, I'm wondering if this isn't what it should have looked like. Tree pruning is a tricky business for me. I'm always worried that I'll cut off fruit spurs and wreck my chances of getting lots of fruit, so I prune conservatively. Plus, I'm never sure how big the tree is supposed to be, particularly in this case, since it was a case of mistaken identity.
The self fertile cherry tree we planted in April 2004, Tehrani Vee, has been fruiting since the first season, yielding more and more every year. This year, the wee wonderful tree gave us about 10 lbs of sweet succulent cherries. We were gorging on cherries every day for over a week.
More than 10 lbs of cherries dropped, rotted in the rain, or was attacked by bugs or birds. So, in a perfect world, it would have yielded
20 lbs of fruit. It's a great cultivar. I'm very pleased with it. The cherries do tend to crack at the peak of ripeness, but other than that, I don't have any complaints. I was unable to spray it with dormant oil in the fall, and the winter turned to summer too quickly for me to do it in the spring. IOW, I didn't treat the tree with anything. We had a slight problem with aphids, and I used soap spray and diatomaceous earth around the trunk. Then, luckily, I accidentally found the nest of the ants that were tending them. We removed the ants, and the aphid problem disappeared. No pear slugs this year either. A good summer for the cherry. But then again, every summer has been a good summer for the cherry. Does anyone else out there have a Tehranivee?EV