We planted a Santa Rosa plum tree, supposedly self pollinating. The first two years it grew and had small amounts of fruit then the third had a full tree of it. SInce then though there has been no flowers or fruit. I have read that it is necessary to prune some fruit bearing trees but I have no idea when, how much or how to prune? Our peach tree has never needed to be pruned nor the cherry tree. Last year we treated the tree for a disease cutting off the affected limb and using the medicine the nursery recommended.. If you have specific information about what to do with this tree for this year and a suggestion on books to read (something like an idiots guide to fruit trees 
" title="Laughing" /> ) since we have planted about 12 different varieties of fruit trees on a new piece of property, we will need to know substancially more about how to care for them.. Thanks you in advance for your help
Angie
I have learned that a sunny warm stretch like we are having right now is the best time to prune. If you prune plums in the cool wet winter and spring, they are likely to contract pseudomonas bacterial disease and you can lose all sorts of branches that way. I do not touch my trees until the weather is warm and dry.
I doubt any sort of nursery-bought medicine will help anything, but it certainly will help the nursery owners bottom-line!
My santa rosa has set no fruit this year either. Likely it was receptive to pollen when the weather was crappy and no insects were flying. Plant some more cultivars close by if you can. The more sorts of pollen you have the better your pollinations will be, year to year.
Is this tree in too much shade of other trees such that it will not form flowers? It is possible.
All this pruning advice goes for cherries and peaches as well. I consider peaches a bust in the Willamette Valley -- too much disease pressure for me. Ditto apricots.
Plums, prunes, pears, figs, apples and grapes do pretty good here, so focus on those. Also any berry crop does pretty good, in case you haven't noticed! " title="Laughing" />
Hope that helps!
Plumfun, excellent answers.
“I have learned that a sunny warm stretch like we are having right now is the best time to prune. If you prune plums in the cool wet winter and spring, they are likely to contract pseudomonas bacterial disease and you can lose all sorts of branches that way. I do not touch my trees until the weather is warm and dry.â€
…now I bet ‘you’re’ the guy who suggested to a guy I just met not to prune ‘plum trees’ until about …now? I think he actually read that advice around here somewhere.
I recently followed that suggested for peaches, but I’ve never heard of waiting ‘this long’ to prune plums… What about your ‘heading cuts,’ there's a lot of them! Do you slide the pruner’s jaw under and back to avoid snipping the substantial new growth? …and don’t you tear up & break off a lot of leaves and tender new growth, not to mention tinder fruit sets..? Most of the work I recently did in my neighbor’s peach trees was removing giant ‘up-rights,’ and it was trouble enough keeping them from ripping up the ‘understory’ as they fell or dropped.
I’m not trying to argue, and am always willing to learn, but I’ve not heard of anyone holding off until ‘now’ to prune ‘plums.’ Now I emphasis ‘plums’ because I’m sure you mean Asian Plums, as opposed to European “prune-plums.†I suspect we’re in agreement that the ‘prunes’ can be pruned while dormant…
Regarding Asian plums, I’ve never had a problem pruning mine in the dead of winter, for well over twenty years... Never any dieback or disease; and they’re such a thicket of new growth, seems it would be twice as difficult to distinguish what goes or stays in full leaf 
I’ll shutup and listen…
Thanks for your reply!
This particular tree is in our backyard with two other trees spaced well apart. They get lots of sun when there is any (Ontario, Canada had one of the wettest years last year ever.. We are close to Lake Ontario pretty much right across the lake from Rochester) there are not other trees really anywhere near them.. The other two trees in the backyard are a peach and a black cherry tree the peach is well established and in its third year of producing the best peaches I've ever tasted 
.. the cherry tree is only two years old but has lots of flowers this year so we have visions of a cherry pie at least...The plum is the oldest and most established and the most disappointing... We will try pruning now and see how that helps but about how much should be pruned off half the branch.. only the top? Sides? I have never cut anything off a tree that wasn't dead already not a clue how much is not enough and how much is too much..
Viron, the reason I say I "learned" this is because I had been pruning in wet weather, or too close to it, and I was always losing branches to pseudomonas. Even on my domestica's. There are certain relatively dry stretches during winter where if you know it is not going to rain for awhile, maybe the freshly injured tissue can dry out a little before the next batch of rains hit. It seems that when rain meets my fresh prunus wounds, infection sets in. That goes for cherries too.
I never worry about how much to take off. I cannot seem to hurt my Jap plums, they are in such a hurry to regrow and too vigorus anyway. Heading cuts, whats that? (joking, my trees need some heading cuts) A home orchard can get away with many things that would horrify a professional orchard.
Hey, my pseudomonas infections are non-existant now that I plan for cuts to dry before rains hit.
Too late for Mashala to go back to last winter during a dry stretch to prune. Just do it now. Or anytime no rain is expected for awhile.
How'd I do?
Edit: Just noticed the Ontario, Canada reference. Is it rain soaked all winter there? If not, then like Viron says, prune away in winter. I originally thought you were in the PNW.
My Santa Rosa had no fruit last year, a poor pollination year for us here at the house for the other Japanese plums too. I pruned these trees once after leaf out a few years back while it was raining and got nailed by disease. It has never quite completely left. After that, I have been scared to prune in rain, period. I normally prune in summer after fruiting. That works well for me and the disease has not advanced since as it did during the pruning in rain. I have many plums on my Santa Rosa this year, although I grafted another variety onto it, and there is a different large one nearby with yet another variety grafted onto it. We have mason bees and many flowers in Spring. Bees like us.
John S
PDX OR
" title="Laughing" /> Rain soaked all winter Sigh.. I wish! Nope, its mostly snow, sleet and ice all winter.. nice for the kids to slide on but not so good for the adults who have to shovel it every other day (good exercise though) Normally the spring and summer have good temperatures that rarely drop below 70 and often into the 80's and 90's but the last two years have been much colder with last year being the worst.. My husbands cousin has a little home farm that was completely drowned out, all the crops rotted before they had a chance to ripen for picking, they gave up in mid july and just mulched the three fields hoping that it would compost quickly and give the next year a better start. My husband was only able to get into his new property 3 or 4 times all summer, even when he managed to get in it was so muddy it was hard to get any work done....and the mosquitos... shudder..... This year we have already had more sunny days than all summer last year.. The weather last year seemed to agree with the peach tree as we had maybe 300 huge peaches, very juicy, but not quite as sweet as the year before. Could the wet weather be the cause of the lack of flowers? Lack of pollination might be a cause of no fruit developing, but no flowers? We have a hive of bumble bees in our driveway of all places and lots of bees wandering around the trees that have flowers but it looks like the flower fairy is once again missing our plum tree..
You say disease never left the tree? Is there nothing that can be done after the tree is infected? My husband wants to get rid of the tree as a lost cause but I told him to wait for advice and see... I wish I could put up a few pics of the tree.. It might just take someone seeing the tree to know what is wrong with it. Is there a Youtube of someone actually pruning? That would be so great... I'm going to search for it.. Most of the branchs on this plum tree are very thick and hard to cut without an electric tool or some kind of saw.. I always pictured pruning as using clippers " title="Laughing" />
...if she’s never pruned this plum, perhaps it’s reverted to strictly a vegetative state? Asian plums go crazy – if ‘left alone’ in an open area, maybe it’s gone for size & space over fruit production..? The pruning process does more than limit size, it also puts the ‘fear of death’ into trees; feeling the stress, they fruit - assuming they may die. This plum’s having too much fun 
- speaking of which…
Plumfun: “Hey, my pseudomonas infections are non-existant now that I plan for cuts to dry before rains hit.
Too late for Mashala to go back to last winter during a dry stretch to prune. Just do it now. Or anytime no rain is expected for awhile.
How'd I do?â€
Boy, I hate to be the Judge; you guys are good! …but I must admit being more a hobbyist …and never pruning in the rain … that could quickly kill this hobby! And I do wait till a predictable winter dry spell (lacking snow – we had 30 inches this winter!).
I wonder… if you’re not making specific ‘heading cuts’ (aiming the last bud you leave, generally down) and ‘just cutting’ to length, could the stubs you leave encourage and harbor the pseudomonas? And when touring a commercial orchard … I’m appalled at the brutal pruning jobs I see… I suspect they can get away with that due to the multitude of ‘sprays’ most use. I don’t, so I spend weeks at this… (if I can swing it) among the birds on the prettiest of winter days.
Wish I could dive into that tree for you Angie… and you can likely find something about pruning online as fast as us… But learning on an Asian (I’ve begun calling them ‘Asian’ as opposed to “Japanese†plums because apparently the Japanese have taken the glory for something China had long cultivated, orchard PC?) …learning on your plum right now sounds nearly perfect: there’s no crop, and lots of material to remove.
Quick and dirty on pruning: cut off (at the limb it sprouts from) anything growing straight up – straight down – or heading toward the center of the tree. After you do that - a pattern generally emerges. “Heading†is simply shortening the lengthy limbs back to a bud; and “Thinning†is basically cutting out sections of heavy growth – back to the ‘branch’ they emerged. Always head back to a bud (now at the base of each leaf) and thin to a clean cut against an older piece of ‘wood.’ Most books on pruning can describe this.
Asian plums generally look like electrified hair – sending lengthy shoots straight out at all angles; after removing the up, downs & in’s – thin out and shorten up what’s left. Actually, to ‘do it right’ might not leave a lot of leaves … and it will need to feed itself this summer… Well (thinking out loud), it’s not going to break from crop load (this year), so if you removed the “up, downs & in’s†and simply shortened some of the longest (and newest) ‘limbs,’ leaving some leaves - that will help control it and put the fear of death into it.
Make sense? If not, ignore me 
" title="Wink" />
My Santa Rosa is baring sparsely this year, as it usually does. Maybe 20 fruits. I've lately given up pruning it correctly and instead just go around the outside like a boxwood shrub, late in the Summer. Same deal with my Elephant Heart, which bears even less.
Oddly enough, my Satsuma bumper crops every year, despite getting pounded by brown rot or pseudomonas or whatever. Lots of dead twigs and branches. 90% of the blossom clusters get killed but the rest all set fruit, which is enough to require a healthy thinning. And for some reason this Satsuma grows with a wide open, spreading habit. Piece of cake to prune it... go figure.
You want some plums... go to One Green World and get a Hollywood.
I wish you could dive into this tree for me too.... " title="Laughing" /> How far is it to here from oregon? " title="Wink" /> Ah this tree has definately been living large... The first year it truly had fruit it was absolutely full and the fruit (so my brother in law says as we were trapped in the middle east for a few months longer than we anticipated being there and missed it all, while they feasted on our bountiful crops 
" title="Crying or Very sad" /> ) were unbelieveably delicious.. Its the stories of those fabled fruit that keep us hoping that this year will be the year we get to try them.... I will get my husband to have at it... What would you suggest as a tool? My husband will use his chain saw if not warned to use something a little less drastic...
I find with my Santa Rosa, I've got to prune it hard. It way overgrows. In fact, I am hoping to graft a branch of Santa Rosa on a tree rather than the whole tree so I won't have so much work pruning. Mine is pretty reliable in fruiting. we get a lot more sun than most parts of BC except say, Penticton. I think it is named for Santa Rosa, California, which gets a lot more sun than anywhere in the NW. I don't know if that's a factor. Although mine still has some remnant of disease, it still flowers and fruits regularly.
John S
PDX OR
“What would you suggest as a tool? My husband will use his chain saw if not warned to use something a little less drastic...â€
No chainsaws! I’ve a ‘double-sided’ pruning saw that works great. It’s a ‘Corona model 49,’ I’ve gone through two, am using one, and have another (brand new) in reserve. They’re a heavier gage steel, so the blade doesn’t ‘wow-out’ or bind & bow during cuts. Otherwise, there are lots of very sharp (if equally expensive) pruning saws around – but if you could snag a Corona, do.
You can’t beat a set of Felco 8 pruners, 
unless you’re left handed, then I think you’d grab the ‘sevens’(?). They’re up to around $50 each, but should last forever. I actually use a number of Chineese knock-offs I found at a local ‘junk’ store for $3.88 each! After using one for a couple days I returned to buy everyone they had, ten I think, and was giving them away, with one in each vehicle. Haven’t seen them since, but I always feel like I’m ‘making money’ just using them …as my Felco’s sit in my grafting box for ‘show.’
And a good pair of ‘bypass’ long-handled ‘loppers’ – for lopping 
I again like Corona, but the best ones come with a ‘rubber bumper’ device to adsorb the shock of coming together… time and time again. …don’t get the ‘anvil’ type, were the blade chops down against a flat piece of metal; you can’t get in as close to limbs as necessary.
I looked over a “DK†book on pruning yesterday at the local garden center, thinking about ‘you.’ Not much on fruit trees… But a basic book with a good section devoted to fruit trees would be helpful, or look around online; it’s all pretty basic.
No need to paint wounds… nature allows them to eventually dry and seal; store-bought sealants simply trap in moisture and increase rot, and if you apply it think enough (like I had) when it eventually cracks the earwigs just love it to hide under it 
Have fun, or your husband. …tell him to circle the tree looking for the next cut, and make the ‘big cuts’ first… just not too big
could the stubs you leave encourage and harbor the pseudomonas?
Naw. it is just the raw tissue being exposed to rain and bacteria at that time of year. Also I never prune a cherry when I expect rain. That gets real dicey.
Raw juicy wounds seem susceptible to psuedomonas on prunus. Dried wounds do not seem to be as susceptible.
Marshala, living in cold dry Canada, has nothing to worry about. I originally thought she was located in the PNW, hence all my pseudomonas admonitions. She probably has black knot or some other critter, being she is on the east coast. I know nothing of the diseases or treatments back east, so perhaps the medicine the nursery sold her really was appropriate! My mistake for assuming she was on the west coast.
Not all is lost when it rains or mists. Heck, the apples, pears, figs and grapes can all use some attention about then. I just treat the whole prunus family to dried out wounds. Seems to work better.
I have recently talked with a cherry orchard owner, and he admits to looking for windows of dry weather before he prunes too. I am not the only one!
BTW, my Moretinni plum branch is sooo loaded it looks like a big cluster of grapes again this year. Last year hardly anything got pollinated, but it was singularly LOADED. I think I'll make a whole tree of this one. It really is an amazing producer. I think its heritage is Santa Rosa x Shiro. It is a yellow plum and pretty decent when there is nothing else on the trees! " title="Laughing" />
I assume it is a fabulous pollinator, given its pedigree.
We cold here but unfortunately not so dry.. too close to the lake, very humid most of the time even when its hot and not raining.. ever since I started writing we have had one rainy day after another... bad luck.. Okay no chain saw.. he asked me if the little electric hand saw would work...(he just finished building a sun room where our deck was so I guess he's hoping to double duty all the tools he bought for that project) sigh!! told him not to be cheap and go out and buy a decent set of pruning tools, god knows the bushes out front could use beating back too.. Hoping for at least a day or two of nice weather in the horizon so we can have at it..
Thank you all so much for all the help and I'll let you know if we get any fruit
Idyllwild
simplepress
jafar
Marsha H
Viron
John S
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