How to Grow Plum

Prunus domestica · Also called: European plum, Garden plum, Damson, Greengage, Mirabelle, Prune plum, Aloo bukhara, Alubukhara

Plum blossom opening on bare dark branches, two white five-petalled flowers with centres full of long stalks tipped yellow, surrounded by closed pale buds, with only small leaves just beginning to unfold.

Photo: Jan Rehschuh, Public domain (Wikimedia Commons)

A plum tree starts paying within three or four years, which is fast for a fruit tree, and then carries on for decades with very little bought in. It also gives a crop in three different forms from the same tree: sold fresh for the best price, dried into prunes that keep for a year and can be sold in the off season, or made into jam and spirits. That flexibility is worth a great deal to a household whose fresh market is small or far away. The plant's limits are just as clear. It needs a proper cold winter to flower at all, it flowers earlier than almost any other fruit tree, and it flowers on bare wood before the leaves are out — so a single frost on the wrong night can take the entire year's crop in a few hours.

Growing Plum, Stage by Stage

1. Get the land ready — Choose a site where frost drains away, on deep soil that does not hold water, and clear it properly because the tree will stand there for thirty years.
2. Choose and get your trees — Buy grafted trees of kinds proven near you, and buy at least two different kinds that flower at the same time so they can set each other's fruit.
3. Plant — Plant while the tree is leafless and resting, with the graft join well above the soil, staked and watered in.
4. Water — Water young trees through their first summers, and water an established tree while the fruit is swelling, because that is when a drought costs you size.
5. Weeds, feeding and suckers — Keep a clear circle around each trunk, feed moderately, and cut off every shoot that comes from below the graft join.
6. Prune in summer, and thin the fruit — Cut plums only while they are in leaf and growing, never in winter, and take off a good share of the young fruit so the rest size up and the branches survive.
7. Harvest — Pick over the tree several times rather than once, take fruit with the stalk and the waxy bloom intact, and pick riper for eating than for selling far away.
8. Keep it, dry it, and store it — Fresh plums last days, so cool them and move them quickly, and turn what you cannot sell into dried fruit that keeps for a year.

Common Problems & Troubleshooting

If you see: Flowers that opened and then turned brown and dropped within a day or two, with the small green centre of each flower blackened when you cut one open, after a clear cold night.

It likely means: Frost killed the open flowers. Plum flowers earlier than almost any other fruit tree, on bare wood, which is exactly why it is the tree most often caught.

Do this: Accept that this year's crop from those flowers is gone. Nothing applied afterwards brings a frosted flower back.

If you see: Fruit going brown and soft with small buff-coloured cushions in rings on the skin, and shrivelled blackened fruit still hanging on the branches through the winter.

It likely means: Brown rot. It moves from fruit to touching fruit, and it survives the winter inside those shrivelled hanging fruits, which are the source of next year's outbreak.

Do this: Pick off and remove every shrivelled hanging fruit and every rotten one on the ground, and take them right out of the orchard.

If you see: Leaves on one branch taking on a dull silvery sheen while the rest of the tree looks normal, and a purple-brown stain inside the wood when that branch is cut across.

It likely means: Silver leaf, a fungus that enters through pruning wounds and works down inside the wood. It usually follows a cut made in the cold season.

Do this: Cut the affected branch well back into healthy wood, past the point where the stain stops inside, and remove it from the orchard.

If you see: A strong healthy tree that flowers well every year and then drops all its flowers or tiny fruitlets, leaving nothing on the branches by early summer.

It likely means: Usually no compatible partner flowering nearby, so the flowers were never fertilised. Frost, cold wet weather keeping insects away, or too much nitrogen can do the same.

Do this: Find out whether your kind sets fruit from its own flowers. Most do not, and a lone tree of a single kind is the commonest cause of this.

If you see: Branches split at the fork or torn away from the trunk under the weight of a heavy crop, with the fruit on them small and crowded.

It likely means: The tree set far more fruit than it could carry and nobody thinned it. Plums overset badly and then break the wood that would have carried future crops.

Do this: Thin the young fruit each year once the natural drop is over, leaving roughly a hand's width between the fruit you keep.

If you see: Ripening fruit with a small hole and a blob of gum on the skin, and a pink or white caterpillar with dark droppings in the flesh around the stone when the fruit is cut.

It likely means: A moth caterpillar that hatches on the fruit and bores in towards the stone. The fruit frequently ripens early and drops before the rest of the crop.

Do this: Pick up and destroy fallen and infested fruit rather than leaving it under the tree, because that is where the next generation comes from.

If you see: Pale rings and blotchy patterns on leaves, and fruit marked with sunken rings and bands, deformed in shape, tasteless, and dropping early.

It likely means: A virus disease of plums spread by sap-sucking insects and carried into an orchard in infected planting material. There is no cure and an affected tree stays affected.

Do this: Report it where it is a notifiable disease, because in many countries there are legal requirements and organised control.

Yield & Market Value

Growing the crop is only part of the job. The last part is knowing what a normal harvest looks like where you are, and knowing what your fruit is worth before you agree a price with anybody.

Remember It This Way

If you forget every other page of this guide, keep these lines. They are the whole crop, in order, short enough to carry in your head.

It needs a real winter. Mild winters give a tree and no fruit.
It flowers early on bare wood. Frost is the biggest risk you have.
Plant on rising ground. Cold air settles in hollows.
Plant two different kinds. One tree alone usually sets nothing.
Keep the graft join above the soil, always.
Prune in summer, never in winter. Winter cuts let silver leaf in.
Thin the young fruit even though it feels wasteful.
Prop heavy branches before they bend, not after they split.
Pick with the stalk on and do not rub off the waxy bloom.
Take every shrivelled fruit off the tree. That is next year's rot.

Test Yourself: Identification

Why are these white flowers opening on bare branches before the tree has any leaves?

What is the pale dusty coating on these red plums, and why does one of them have a clear finger mark on it?

What is this whole tree carrying, and what is the one small dark shrivelled fruit hanging among the good ones?

Honest Limits of This Guide

This guide covers the European plum. The Japanese plum grown widely in warmer countries is a different species, needs less winter cold, flowers even earlier, and is pruned and thinned on a different pattern. If your trees fruit well where winters are mild, you are probably growing that one, and some of this advice will not fit.
Every timing in this guide is given in seasons rather than in dates, because everything about this tree is set by your winter and your last frost. The same variety behaves completely differently at different altitudes and latitudes, and your neighbours' experience is better information than anything written here.
Which kinds will fertilise which is a matter of local variety names and flowering times, and it changes with what nurseries sell where you are. This guide says that you almost certainly need two different kinds flowering together, and leaves the pairing to a nursery or a licensed dealer who knows what is grown locally.
No product, spray or dose is named anywhere in this guide. What is registered for plums differs by country, changes, and waiting times before picking matter for a fruit eaten fresh. Ask a licensed dealer and follow the label.

Sources

GBIF Backbone Taxonomy species-match record for Prunus domestica L. — Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Copenhagen (source)
EPPO Global Database — Prunus domestica (EPPO code PRNDO) — European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO), Paris (source)
FAOSTAT crops and livestock products — production data for plums and sloes — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome (source)
Prunus domestica (plum) — CABI Compendium datasheet — CABI, Wallingford (source)

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