I came bombing up the drive one day this week here at Struan Farm to discover this:
One of my laden little plum trees, split. It's either a Santa Rosa or an Omega, one of two later varieties we have, both of which are "chocka" with fruit this year. I'll never know if it just couldn't handle the weight of the fruit, whether the birds jumped on the branches to retaliate against me for netting it, or if Clifford got caught out trying to pull a low hanging plum off the tree. It could be any one of those things or a combination thereof. John is set to perform surgery and mend the split, but the branch will be cut back severely. Fortunately another main branch remains intact.
I picked a big bucket of the plums that are close to ripe off the branches to see if I can get them to ripen on trays in the garage. It may be that the fruit still remaining on the fallen branches will continue to ripen, we'll see. I'm thinking that I should have picked off some of the fruit to reduce the burden on this small tree, that it's my fault this happened. It will get a good prune and be looked after, I promise.
At the moment I'm feeling like the pests are getting the upper hand on me this season! Even though we have harvested a good amount of plums:
Keep focusing on the glass half full, right Karen?
Just cut it back a bit and tape it up. It will repair itself. But then John will know that. I have done it to two trees and they are fine.
Posted by: Nancy Brown | 01/18/2019 at 09:13 AM