Plum

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Plum (Latin Prunus) - a popular fruit crop; shrubs or trees of the Pink family.

Characteristics of culture

Plum is a stone fruit crop that, with proper care, gives large and high-quality fruit yields. The crown of the plant is spreading, as a rule, spherical or ovoid, some varieties have thorns on the branches. The root system is pivotal, with a large number of lateral roots located at a depth of 20-40 cm.

Leaves are simple, lanceolate or elliptical, with jagged edges, pubescent on the outside, arranged alternately. The flowers are pink or white, solitary or collected in umbellate inflorescences. The fruit is a drupe, depending on the variety, it can be red, blue, yellow, green, purple or burgundy. The stone is brown, flattened, pointed at both ends.

Currently, the genus plum has about 35 species, distributed mainly in the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere. In Russia, the most popular types are: home plum, Chinese plum, Ussuri plum, prickly plum (or thorn) and splayed plum (or cherry plum).

The culture begins to bear fruit approximately 3-5 years after planting, usually the first harvests are large enough - 15-30 kg per tree or shrub. Plum is productive for 15-20 years, sometimes longer, however, the yield decreases every year.

Growing conditions

Plum prefers loose, cultivated, sod-podzolic, chernozemic or gray forest soils with a rich mineral composition and neutral pH. Acidic soils need liming at least once every four years. Negatively, the culture refers to cold and floating soils.

Plum is a moisture-loving plant, although it does not tolerate excess moisture. It is recommended to grow the crop in areas well-lit by the sun, in shaded areas, especially behind buildings, high fences and trees, the plum is pulled up and practically does not bear fruit.

Landing

Plum seedlings are planted in early autumn or early spring. Prepare planting pits in advance, its dimensions should be 50 * 50 cm. The distance between plantings should be at least 2.5-3 m. The soil taken out of the pit is mixed with rotted manure, granular phosphate, wood ash and potassium sulfate.

Part of the resulting soil substrate is poured onto the bottom of the pit, forming a hill, then the seedling is lowered so that the root collar is 5-6 cm above the soil level, tamped with the remaining soil, watered and mulched with peat or fallen leaves. When planting in autumn, the leaves of the seedling are removed, since they take a lot of moisture from the still unformed roots.

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In early spring, plums are carefully loosened into the soil near the trunk circles and urea is introduced. Re-loosening and feeding with organic fertilizers, potassium chloride and superphosphate is carried out when the plum begins to bear fruit.

Sanitary and formative pruning is carried out 2-3 weeks before the beginning of the growing season, when the average daily air temperature will be 6-8 C. Perennial branches of older trees and shrubs are shortened by 4-5 years of their part, the years are counted from the periphery. Plums that have reached the age of 18-20 years are uprooted or rejuvenated by cutting off the main trunk, leaving 4-5 shoots.

Fight disease

One of the most common plum viruses is the sharki pathogen (aka plum pox). Symptoms of the disease appear 20-30 days after flowering. Yellowish-green spots are formed on the leaves, and on the fruits - depressed stripes or rings. The affected parts of the culture acquire a brownish color, the fruits ripen quickly and fall off. Plumpox causes a 50% loss in yield, while impairing the quality of the fruit remaining on the branches. Unfortunately, there are no effective methods of dealing with the causative agent sharka; the affected trees and shrubs are uprooted and burned.

Very often, the plum is affected by homoz, moniliosis or coccomycosis. These diseases appear due to the action of unfavorable conditions, for example, severe cold weather and the scorching sun, as well as mechanical injuries. To combat these diseases, they regularly carry out sanitary pruning, disinfection of damaged areas of plants with copper sulfate or garden varnish.