North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com>]

I don't manage any northern type plums besides Mt. Royal but it really seems to come down to dealing with the natural growth habit of any given variety.  Some varieties, like Ozark Premier (Jap hybrid) and Castleton (euro), have naturally spreading habits and are relatively easy to manage but many, like Elephant Heart (Jap) and Seneca (Euro) want to grow excessively upright- especially when on myro.

 

I say, spread them madly, and for slow fruiting Euros you can even try festooning (tying branches below horizontal) to force flowering.  These days I even use apple tree spreaders to get the shape I want.

 

Many plums don't send out many useful secondary branches (smaller branches connected to scaffolds) ((scaffolds are the large branches connected to the trunk)).  I usually just mercilessly remove over-sized secondary wood and thereby maintain the scaffold as a kind of horizontal central leader, but when the tree refuses to grow small secondary wood I will make some compromises.  Some people just keep stubbing the lanky wood back and grow extra scaffolds to efficiently harvest light through the tree.

 

When I have time to write a thousand page encyclopedia on how I prune various species and cultivars I'll let you all know just in case someone wants to read it.