My uncle had a nice (20ft.) plum tree in his backyard that produced an excellent tasting dark purple plum. I don't know of the name but it produced fruit every year. That was till his wife (now his ex-wife ..... and no not because of this) pour hot grease next to the tree clogging the roots and killing half the tree. It still produced fruit on the good half of the tree for the remaining 5 or so years before it was cut down. Wanting one of my own I dug up a shoot (plant growing from the roots) and transplanted it and brought it up......that was about 3-4 years a go, NO FRUIT (nor blooms come to think about it). It was a lone tree at my uncle's house and I just like 2 doors down (real close) and it will not produce. Might his plume tree been grafted with another to cross pollinate.....and my shoot was from the roots giving me only one variaty of the plum? Im not sure if it was grafted or not for it was there for close to 20 years. My tree is about 6 feet tall and about 3 feet wide. It is in a 5 gallon bucket now with plenty of room for roots to spread. It will be going in the same backyard as the original after a little remodeling (Thats right, I am giving up my plum tree.....I will still get the fruit though LOL). Really want to make sure it will fruit before planting though. Oh yeah, we also dug up another shoot from the roots in the same spot at the same time.....that plum tree went somewhere else and from what I hear 'it produces' Any help?
If another shoot from that tree is producing fruit, yours should also make fruit. I don't think a 5 gallon pot is enough rootspace for a fruit tree to produce however. Was the other shoot planted into the soil?
Im sure it was planted in the ground ... as mine will be as well. As of now it has plenty of root space (maybe not to bare alot of fruit, I was just thinking that after 3 years i'd get some blooms at least. correct me if im wrong, but plums need to be pollinated to produce, unless it was 2 grafts on one tree. Because mine came from the roots as a shoot, would one assume that it is a single plant (I highly doubt that I got some sort of hybrid). Any idea on what kind of plum tree could pollinate this one. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the original since it was cut down. It produces medium sized dark purple plums.....does the pollinator have to be of the same or will a "green plum" tree pollinate it. I know there are 2 types that cant pollinate between each other.
Many plums are self fertile, some require pollination from other varieties. In general Asian and European varieties do not pollinate each other. It sounds like pollination may not be your problem, if the tree has not even produced blossoms. We don't know for sure what type of tree you have, so if you want to try to get another tree for cross pollination, I would try to get a variety that blooms at about the same time of the season that the big old original tree used to blooom. It is likely that the sapling is the same variety as your uncle's old tree. If the other sapling produces, yours should to. Find out what those people are doing.
