Do you know how many plums that tree has given us in five years? NONE. Zero plums. A complete absence of plums.
Now ask me how many times the tree has even blossomed in its entire life. Once! ONE TIME. That was last year.
Can you guess how many blossoms it produced last year? Can you? Because I'll tell you. ONE BLOSSOM. Oy.
In short, this plum tree has been a giant pile of fail. Until this year.
Check it out, you guys! I know it's hard to tell from this terrible photo (the dog, a.k.a. Mister Awful Adorable, a.k.a. Gozer the Destructor, Destroyer of Plants and Peace and Socks and Souls, was simultaneously jumping on me and trying to eat the tree while I was taking pictures) but this year the dern thing is simply LOUSY with blossom buds! There are at least a couple of dozen on there, a few of which have just begun to open.
This makes me SO very happy, I can't even tell you. Maybe we'll get some plums this year! You think? Well, even if we don't, the tree gets points for effort.
I guess we won't chop it up for kindling after all.
Two words for you now my friend:
ReplyDeleteWater
Fertilise
Lots of watering
Lots of tender fertilising
Also think of investing in a net you can throw over it if you have a quarter of the wildlife we have here who will DEMOLISH this tree before you can even taste one plum from its branches.
No I'm not bitter. Not one little bit.
We have two "non-fruit bearing" plum trees. They have produced plums every year! The birds get them all. I assumed my landscaper would know the difference...guess not!
ReplyDeleteYou are a kinder soul than I. I would not have been so patient and probably woulda chopped the sucker down :D Which may explain why my yard looks the way it does :) :)
ReplyDeleteI love that flower shot.
I am not a green thumb at all but I am surrounded by those and I've heard fruit trees take a few years before bearing fuits, so DON'T KILL IT.
ReplyDeleteOhh, so pretty! Our blossoms are stunted right now because of all the cold weather we've been having. This shot is so sunny and springy. :)
ReplyDeleteThe woman we bought our house from planted a peach tree. I don't know what she was thinking --this is northern Illinois, after all, garden zone 4!
ReplyDeleteThe peach tree never bloomed, until one summer it just split in half. It was already a small tree, and only had two major branches. So, one of them fell off by the end of that growing season.
Well, apparently that scared the peach tree into action --the remaining branch was absolutely covered with blossoms the next spring --hundreds of blossoms! They all started becoming peaches, and then some time in the middle of summer the tree realized it didn't have the energy to support even one quarter of that harvest. So, they all fell off before ripening, and after that the other half collapsed. It made decent kindling.