Gunner wrote:
On Mar 6, 6:55 am, cheapo wrote:
Hi folks.
I have a sort of clump of plums at the end of my garden that have
never been maintained in any way. And although there was an insanely
enthusiastic crop of little plums had from them in 2010, I really
feel I should reduce them if I can.
I've been in this place for 10yrs+, and although the neighbours have
never said anything, I feel that they might prefer a little more
daylight. And I actually have to use a ladder to gather the fruit,
despite the 4 to 5 inch thin trunks. It was pretty wobbly up there
let me tell you!

Can't post the image, so here's the link to photobucket.

http://tinyurl.com/4lhovkv

That is just one of the trees, and was after most of the fruit had
been picked. There was so much that the branches were breaking!! My
garden is only 11-ish feet wide, so 5 twenty plus feet high trees is
a bit much.

Thanks in advance people!

--
cheapo

You know your height need to come down, just don't do it too fast or
cut too much....Maybe 3-5 years to get it to a trainable height...


I am not trying to start an argument because I have never done very heavy
pruning of fruit trees. I do know of cases where very heavy pruning has
been done in one go and the trees survived.

One was a case of severe drought where the owner saved a citrus orchard by
cutting the mature trees down to pretty well leafless stumps about 1.2m
(4ft) high. When it rained they all re-sprouted and in two years he was
back in production. The other was a bloke who experiments with many exotic
fruit trees (his orchard has 100s of trees) who moves mature trees if he
thinks they could do better in another spot. He cuts them down to a stump
about 1.2 to 1.8 m(4 to 6ft) before digging them up. He will try this with
any kind of tree and reports high success rates.

David