A number of year ago I had a very similar thing happen, but my tree was
supposed to be a sweet cherry tree. I spent three years seeing strange
little fruits develope and then fall off before I could figure out what
they were. The fourth year I sprayed dormant oil and then followed it
with an orchard pesticide. I can't remember the brand, but I sprayed it
faithfully according to the directions and lo and behold I got a
wonderful yield of purple plums. This wasn't what I wanted, but I like
plums so I figured no big deal. Then they got ripe and were the most
awful, tasteless things I had ever had. My assumption was that the
rootstock was for a bad tasting, but very hardy plum and that a sweet
cherry was grafted to it. When the graft died it grew from the rootstock
and the grower never noticed. I don't know that this is what happened,
but I sure don't know why anyone would want to grow that variety of plum
on purpose.
Linda
The prune plum is a whole other story. It was mislabelled as being an
apricot when I bought it in '96, and I didn't know that it wasn't an
apricot till it fruited a few years ago, so I don't know which cultivar
it is.
Last year it bore heavily, but dropped about a third of it's fruit
before it ripened. I lost half of what was left to various bugs in
various stages. And some of the fruit had what looked like crystallized
loops and nubs and dribbles of sap on them. What is that?
Last fall I pruned off all the water spouts that had grown and cut the
tree back to a manageable size, trying to recognize the fruit spurs.
This year the tree fruited even more heavily, but has dropped about 2/3
of its fruit, either green and shrivelled, purple and shrivelled, or
purple and hard. The crystallized stuff is on many of them too, and I
can see bumps and punctures on much of the fruit. If I get a dozen
edible plums, I'll be lucky. So much for the plum jam and the galettes.
I'm not big on pesticides and such, but will definitely be using dormant
oil this fall and next spring. Any comments, insights or suggestions on
the plum problems would be appreciated.
Thanks!
EV
There are pictures of the cherry tree in various stages, and some of the
other edibles in my garden, he
http://www3.sympatico.ca/great/tempee.html