Fellenberg plum does not bloom or bear

I have a 9 yr old Fellenberg plum that I have yet to get any fruit from. I have other European plums so pollination is not the problem. This year it has 5 plums on it (and it is a fairly lg. tree) This spring it might have had 40 blooms on it total. Usually it has only 10 to 20. I have 3 yr old European plums with lots more fruit than it. One yr I tried very heavy winter pruning thinking that might shock it. Last yr I hardly pruned at all. Neither idea worked.
RED

Red, I don't have a great answer here but I can offer a thing or two. My Fellenberg is finally fruiting this year, its 5th. Several others have not fruited at all. I got better results this year on several of my European plums after pruning them more "open" -- they were getting too little light in the areas fruit could form. So I removed any branch that seemed to be crowded, to make a lot more light penetrate the tree. I also do summer pruning several times to limit the vigor.

I have heard numerous stories of waiting ten years to fruit, in particular on Green Gage (I am still waiting on mine, it will be 7th year minimum). There also is some correlation with rootstock. Citation is very fast to fruit. I would say it then goes in the order of St. Julian, Mariana, and Myroloban.

Scott

Scott
I have my tree pruned to an open center. It is a fairly lg. tree. the trunk is more than 6" in diameter and the tree has been allowed to grow about 12' tall. The problem seems to be the lack of blooms. It has very very few blooms. I am not exaggerating when I estimate the total number at about 40 to 50. It started blooming about 5 yrs ago but the first 2 yrs it had about 10 to 15 blooms each yr. Last year it had a few more but of course the freeze wiped them all out. I counted plums this weekend and I found 3 left on the tree. It has me stymied.
On an aside, we have been hit very hard with Japanese Beetles this yr. I had to spray twice in the last 7 days. Are you having a problem with them this yr? I picked my Shiros Saturday and the beetles wre feasting on the leaves and also the plums.
RED

Do you fertilize? Maybe it is getting too much nitrogen. Try a 6-20-20 or something like it with less nitrogen. Do you know your soil composition? What is the soil PH? The water PH? Maybe you could need amendments, but don't just add things without knowing what you have to start with. Your open center pruning sounds right but you might try slanting the more or less flat top toward the south to receive even more sun inside the tree in the spring. This all assumes you get adequate chill hours during the winter.

I get adequate chill hrs. here in zone 6. I fertilized it the first 3 or 4 yrs with a balanced fertilizer, but haven't fertilized it in the last 3 yrs. I thought that might be a problem. I have 2 other plums the same age within 20 ft. of it and they both bear their heads off with the same care I give the Fellenberg.
RED

Imred, I have a chainsaw you could borrow if you lived closer. LOL

I am sad to hear it takes so long to get plums- I planted a Methley and a Starke Bros [something] last year and was hoping for a small crop next Spring (2009). Sounds like they may be a candidate for pulling up. I have plenty of fig trees I could plant and the Jap. beetles, rabbits and deer won't touch them.

Paul

Red, you may have pruned the tree in a manner that leaves little fruiting wood. I did that with my Damson plum. The fruiting wood on some plums is more on the 2/3 year wood so if you don't have much of that around you won't get many plums. I had to butcher my Damson this spring and I am trying to let it grow lots of short 1-year shoots this year which will hopefully give me more fruiting spots next year. The Japanese plums seem to be able to form fruit on any age wood so it does not matter as much there. Note that I don't feel I fully understand how to do plum pruning, most plums work OK but some like Damson are just too vigorous and I can't get them to settle down.

I saw exactly two Japanese beetles this year, humping away on a grape leaf. I crunched em, and that ended my Japanese beetle season. It is the mildest I have seen since I started my orchard. Maybe they know I bought a can of milky spore (which I still have not gotten around to spreading out!) and have been avoiding me.

Scott

Paul, Methley is a Japanese hybrid and it will fruit very quickly. The European plums are the ones that can take forever.

Scott

I counted yesterday and I have 4 plums on a mature tree. They are turning purple. That is 4 more than I have harvested in the last 9 yrs. They will probably fall off.
RED