Aphids on plum tree (again). Do I give up?

[TabbyStar]

The plum tree is about 6 or 7 years old. For a couple of years it had a great crop of plums, then three years ago it got aphids and only a few plums. I got some ladybirds and last year no real aphid problems but no plums. This year no plums and aphids again. I can spray the bottom leaves with washing up liquid but this only gets a small proportion of the tree. It's near my patio and white sticky stuff keeps falling where the table and chairs are so it's a pain. Should I just cut it down and replace it with something else or is there another option? Thanks!

My husband used 1.5 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, 1 teaspoon of olive oil in a spray water bottle that was only half full.of water. Spray twice a day until it clears
Make sure the plum tree is well hydrated, remove leaves that are too far gone or infested..takes a.few weeks of persistence to see a difference, the aphids don't like the oil or bicarb,

The problem with spraying is I can only get a bit of the tree (not helped by the neighbour parking his sports car he's mending on his astroturf the other side of the fence in his back garden so I have to be careful about it blowing anywhere!)

It's not happy, the weather could be to blame or the garden centre ( I've bought fruit trees which have fruited brilliantly for the first 2 years and then hardly anything at all. I think that the GCs' FORCE the trees into fruiting tooo early for their age. (if it's possible ). Just spray them off using water in an old ,washed out, kitchen spray bottle.

Traditionally they often fruit well every other year .

The fruiting will depend on a number of things 1) did it fruit too much last year? - if so it'll have a rest the next - this is the biennial bearing ppeatfruit is talking about 2) did you have spring frosts which killed the blossom? 3) did you have bullfinches eating the blossom?

If you didn't have flowers, then the problem was sometime before flowering. If you had flowers, but they didn't set, then it's bad weather at the time, perhaps too few insects. If little plums set, but all fell off at pea sized, then it will be the dry summer.

Definitely no bullfinches, sadly! Plums for three years in a row then no plums three years in a row (perhaps that's the pattern now I'm writing it out ). Possibly spring frosts, yes, but the main problem is that the aphids are producing a load of white sticky stuff (I presume it's them!) which is making our patio unusable (this year and also two years ago). It's attracting loads of flies too. Can't get to the top of the tree to spray.

I think I've answered my own question and it needs to go .

Plum trees are usually fairly good, if yours is a Victoria, then they are more delicate, the run of the mill damson types tend to self seed and fruit well in our garden,( I didn't plant one!). I've lost 2 French mirabelle plum trees, we love them and the assistant in the shop said they would grow "anywhere" which was not the case!

I had a plum tree in my old garden, that was Victoria, I can't remember what this one is, but I've decided it's going. The aphids are attracting big black flies and it's horrible. It's still of a size that I can take it down myself. It's a bit sad, but I've tried with it for the past three years and failed. It's really unpleasant to sit in my garden. I've taken off some of the lower branches, but will get the saw into it tomorrow.

That's a shame, are there any birds interested in it? Though they say that trees shouldn't be too close to houses anyway.