Cutting back Victoria Plum Tree

Hi All

The weather certainly seemed warmer today, could be false dawn, but maybe spring is on its way :o)
I know my daffs are showing all their little heads through right now .... so here's hoping

Anyhows, I want to trim back my Victoria Plum tree, it's only relatively young (i've only had it planted for 3 seasons now) and its getting progressively better each year. However, its starting to get really tall, sticky/leggy and looking generally rather thin, so it's never cropped more than maybe 50 fruit per season.

I'm thinking if I crop the leading vertical branches right back and trim off some of the really thin lower twiggy branches it might concentrate all its growing efforts into a smaller area and hence more fruit?

How much should I cut it back and when would be the best time (please don't say last Autumn, lol)


Thanks, in anticipation of some good answers
John

 

Plums should be pruned in summer John as there is a risk of developing silver leaf if done in spring or winter/autumn.
That's the conventional wisdom but I've done some quite severe pruning on a 20 year old tree in mid to late autumn and had no problem apart from the tree taking a year to come back into fruit after the first (very severe) pruning.

In your case with such a young tree, I'd be tempted to wait until this summer before pruning as you've described. Fifty plums is quite a reasonable crop from a 3 year old. How many plums can you eat!!

 

Thanks for the quick reply Dave,

To be honest I don't really like plums, my wife eats most and the parents take the rest.

If 50 isn't too bad for a 3 year old then thats good, i'll take your advise too and give it a trim back about June, nothing too severe for its first one mind.

My sister-in-law also has a Victoria Plum tree, about 8~9 years old and she's hacked her's back to just the main trunk (about 4" dia) and maybe 3 or 4 chunky but pretty short off-shoot branches ... and she harvests the plums like they're going out of fashion. I really don't know how the tree has survived but it seems to like it :o)


Thanks again