Home & Garden

In the UK, now is the perfect time to plant plum trees.  The soil is moist, but the ground is still warm so it won’t be a shock to the system when you plant the tree.

I’d usually recommend October planting, but this November is turning out to be very mild so far.

But hurry!  You want to get them in at least a week or two before the first frost.  You can pick up a young plum tree for as little as £3.99 at the moment – I know because we just got one.

It’s well worth it.  You could spend £3.99 on a couple of kilos of plums next summer, but a single tree could give you as many as 20 kilos.  And then it will do the same again next year, and the year after, and so on for many years to come.  That’s a bargain in my book!

If you have a small garden and space for only one plum tree, you really must choose a self-fertile variety.  This basically means that the flowers will be pollinated by flowers from the same tree.

If you have neighbours with plum trees, you might think you can get away with a tree that is not self-fertile, but think again.  Not all plum trees are compatible with each other.

Good varieties for the UK, which are self-fertile are:

Blue Tit, Czar, Dennistons Superb (greengage), Early Laxton, Marjorie’s Seedling, and of course, Victoria.

It’s better to dig the soil for the tree a month before planting, but it’s too late for that.  Not to worry; it will still be ok.

Dig a hole large enough to accommodate the spread out roots of the selected tree.  Dig in some organic  material such as leaf mould, compost, chicken droppings, bonemeal etc.  Get the soil into a friable (crumbly) condition.  Plant the tree so that the soil level remains the same – you should be able to determine the soil-line on the trunk of the tree.

Don’t add any fertiliser - it will damage the roots.  We need the roots to settle down and get established in the soil before the onset of winter.

Fill the hole up with the soil mixture and firm down.  Try to eliminate large pockets of air around the  roots.

Support the young tree with a stake for at least 2 years, otherwise it may topple over and suffer damage.   Don’t tie with wire or anything that can cut the tree, and don’t tie them too tightly.  In the spring and summer, we’ll have to check that the ties are not too tight.