Denniston's superb...

... has finally lived up to it's name. Boughs of excellent quality fruit bending branches, but also attracting legions of wasps. Like Devoe, they had started to swell and crack following drought/heavy rainfall, allowing wasps easy access. Its actually quite dangerous harvesting with this level of wasp activity, we resorted to protecting hands and removing whole branches rather than picking individual fruits by hand. Another reason was that much of the fruit was on wood that had migrated northwards over the fence. Didn't measure the crop - a certain amount was wasp-spoiled and discarded, plus we ate an awful lot as we were picking. We've been eating about 8 a day for the last week, with half a tray still left.

I think the reason for the sudden increase in crop is due to not pruning extension growth at all last year (which did mean it had got rather out of control). The tree isn't trained as such, but vI don't think this variety likes being pruned at all. We removed two large uprights, nearly 6' long (which would have taken the overall height to way over 12 feet if left), from the centre of the tree and removed most of those overhanging the fence. Will try to 'festoon' new growth from lower on the trunk, and try to tie down extension growth of the main 'T' shape just to keep it tidy and accessible. This is about as late as I would ever want to prune a plum to avoid silverleaf.

Denniston's (un) Superb

 Yet again this plum has failed to live up to it's name. Despite flowering freely and appearing to set a fair quantity of fruit, I can barely find a handful that have survived the June drop. A shame, as it is a superb gage-like plum with a very rich, sweet flavour.

I think the problem may lie partly with the soil type, as even wild sloes find it difficult to produce fruit here on the thin layer of soil that sits on waterlogged gravel. Interestingly someone from the village once wrote in to GQT to say their plums rarely fruited, and was fobbed off with the usual load of inaccurate nonsense that passes for advice on my least favourite radio problem.

Plum Pruning experiment

An experiment. I've never pruned a plum before June (not counting the suckers I removed from my land-lady's Victoria whilst it was dormant, which went on to develop silver leaf as a result, hence my caution). Sources seem to differ on when safe pruning can be done. Some say it is fine as soon as the plant is in vigourous growth (April); others to delay until June just to be on the safe side.

However, this Denniston's Superb has never lived up to its name. It took years to flower at all, and now only produces about 10% of the blossom I'd expect (making the Coe's Golden Drop look generous) and sets even less.

Festooning the branches has helped, and most of the fruit that sets is usually to be found on a bent branch. I usually summer prune, but still there is too much unproductive growth. This year I have removed all extension growth back to either a flowering spur, or 'knobbly' wood that looks like it might spur if it ever ceases to sulk. We shall see.

I suspect the real problem is that the soil here is unsuitable for plums. We have a very shallow layer of topsoil, on a few inches of clay which sits on water-logged gravel, the water table being only a couple of feet from the surface at times. I suspect there is a lot of nutrient leaching. Even the local blackthorn bushes set crops of sloes very rarely.