Growing Plums

Plum is ranked third in production quantity after apricot and peach among all the stone fruits. Even though there are five different plum varieties in Turkey, three of them are important in terms of their commercial value.

• European plums: This variety generally bears oval fruits and it is the most produced variety in Turkey. Other than being edible, European plums can be consumed as dry, fruit juice, jam, marmalade and canned.
• Japanese plums: Originated in China, this variety bears heart or round shaped fruits. Fruit size is larger than European plum and it ripens in a long period of time including June- September period. It is produced only for fresh consumption. In accordance with the growing demands of consumers, production of this variety rapidly increases.
• Green plums: This variety is used as the rootstock for other plum varieties as its fruit can be table plum in the stage of taking the green color on and in the ripening stage.

Climate Requirements

• Climate requirements are very different in varied plum varieties. For green plums, temperate, for European plums, cold temperate, and for Japanese, temperate or hot temperate with no harsh winter conditions are the most suitable climates. As it is in other fruit varieties, chilling requirement under the + 7 0ºC shows changes according to the variety of plum fruit trees. Chill hours in green plums change from 600 to 800, in Japanese plums, from 700 to 1000 hours and in European plums, it changes between 800 and 1200 hours in total.
• Since Japanese and green plums blossom 3-4 weeks earlier from European plums, they frequently get exposed to the spring late frosts in the areas outside of Mediterranean, Aegean and Southern Marmara regions. Especially little fruits are very sensitive to the frost so they get harmed at the temperatures of -1,1 - 0,6 0ºC.

Soil Requirements

• Plums are moderately selective in terms of soil requirements. Since plums have hairy roots, they can grow in the soils with limited depth. Green plums give better results in poor, high in lime rate and poorly drained soil. Plums that belong to the Japanese group are more selective than the other plum varieties and they should be cultivated in deep, rich in nutrient soils. In the heavy and poorly drained soils, plums give better results in compared to other stone fruit varieties. Plums can easily be cultivated in soils with 6,5-7,2 pH scales.

Creating Garden

• Before creating a garden, in order to prevent water accumulation, you should do the draining and grading first and also you should fight against weeds either with herbicides or deep ploughing. If the drip irrigation system will be installed, it should be done before planting. Studies show that garden size ideally should, at least, be 40-50 decares in order to drive profit from the garden.
• If the varieties that will be used in creating garden are self-incompatible, a fertilizing variety definitely should be included in the garden with the rate of 10 percent to 50 percent. When creating a garden in the regions that have spring late frosts, northward slopes are preferable in order to avoid early waking in trees. In the regions with temperate winter climate, planting should be in fall and in other areas it should be in spring.

Planting Distance

• In closing plum gardens, fruit trees are planted on a square or triangular grid. Depending on the rootstock variety, spacing can be 6x6m, 6x5m or 5x4 m. If the soil of our garden is very high in nutrient, spacing should be larger.

Planting Fruit Trees

• In planting fruit trees digging holes with the size of 60x60 cm is suitable. The depth of the hole shouldn’t be less than 50 cm. Before planting, root pruning should be done and very long, broken or curved roots should be cut off. Side branches are also pruned from 2-3 buds. Planting board should be used and the graft point should be 2-3 cm above the planting board. Soils that came out of the dug holes and burnt barnyard manure are mixed and half of the holes are filled with this mixture. Therefore, cupolas occur. Fruit trees are places in these cupolas, roots unlatched. Rest of the soil that came out of the dug holes is put on top by pressing it. You should be careful about the graft points of the fruit trees, they shouldn’t be under the soil level and also, even though the soil is sufficiently humid, sap should be given. In order to protect the trees from getting harmed by the gales, a stake should be stitched up at 15-20 cm distance of the tree in the windward and tied up to the tree with a flexible material.
• Cutting of the fruit tree for 70-80 cm from top after planting causes shortness in the tree. Therefore, the tree grows splay not upright.

Rootstock

• Using rootstock is almost obligatory for every fruit variety. The variety that is grafted on the rootstock is affected by it in terms of growth capacity, resistant to diseases, fertility, fruit quality, blossom time, resistant to dry season and frosts, resistant to lime and salinity, resistant to underground water and nutrient level.

Plum Rootstocks

• For plums, most commonly, seedling is used as the rootstock. As the seedling, Myrobalan (wild form of green plum) rootstocks are preferable.  Using clonal rootstocks for plums have become increasingly widespread. The most important ones of those clonal rootstocks are Myrobalan 29 C, Myrobalan B, Myrobalan GF31, Marianna 2624, Marianna GF8-1, Saint Julien A, Saint Julien 655/2, Pixy and GF 677 (peach x almond hybrid).