In a month or so, we're going to be cutting down our plum tree. It's the
second one we're removing, and we're taking it out for the same reason.
It's growing shoots out of the root stock's roots. This is the tree that
was sold to me as an Apricot by the now defunct Garden Centre chain,
White Rose. I waited 6 years to find out that it was a prune plum. It
yielded well for a few years, and then due to any number of possible
combinations of factors, it's dwindled to virtually nothing. Off with
it's head! It will give us some nice firewood.

I cut it way back, so that the tomatoes it shades in the early evening
would get more light. Now that I've cut the tree way way back, I'm
wondering if this isn't what it should have looked like. Tree pruning is
a tricky business for me. I'm always worried that I'll cut off fruit
spurs and wreck my chances of getting lots of fruit, so I prune
conservatively. Plus, I'm never sure how big the tree is supposed to be,
particularly in this case, since it was a case of mistaken identity.

The self fertile cherry tree we planted in April 2004, Tehrani Vee, has
been fruiting since the first season, yielding more and more every year.
This year, the wee wonderful tree gave us about 10 lbs of sweet
succulent cherries. We were gorging on cherries every day for over a
week.

More than 10 lbs of cherries dropped, rotted in the rain, or was
attacked by bugs or birds. So, in a perfect world, it would have yielded
20 lbs of fruit. It's a great cultivar. I'm very pleased with it. The
cherries do tend to crack at the peak of ripeness, but other than that,
I don't have any complaints. I was unable to spray it with dormant oil
in the fall, and the winter turned to summer too quickly for me to do it
in the spring. IOW, I didn't treat the tree with anything. We had a
slight problem with aphids, and I used soap spray and diatomaceous earth
around the trunk. Then, luckily, I accidentally found the nest of the
ants that were tending them. We removed the ants, and the aphid problem
disappeared. No pear slugs this year either. A good summer for the
cherry. But then again, every summer has been a good summer for the
cherry. Does anyone else out there have a Tehranivee?

EV