Plum harvest this year?

[Willo1984]

Anyone with plum trees - how's your harvest been this year? Mine has been terrible this year and I'm wondering if it's the trees, or the cold spring and cloudy summer?

East of Scotland here. After a poor year last year we are due our biggest crop ever on our decrepit looking tree. (I feel it might give up and die afterwards!)

I'm not an expert on plums but we have small yellow ones in absolute ABUNDANCE this year. Previous years hardly any. Trying to pick them up from the ground but they're falling at like 50 every twenty minutes and I've spotted a rat gorging himself on them.

After a bumper year last year (1 Victoria tree, about 14 yrs old), I've got about 5 this year! I saw a pigeon eating the blossom so I reckon that was it...

@Babdoc

Scotland. Plum tree overloaded and groaning, but nowhere near ripe yet! My tree tends to alternate good and bad years regardless of weather. It was minus 18C here in Feb, and the blossom was a little late this year. I give a good potash feed every spring to encourage fruiting.

How much potash do you use? We kept several rubble bags full from a series of bonfires that we had earlier in the year, but I'm not sure how much to put on the apples and pears.

In York our Victoria harvest has been 'OK'. Not as good as last year but better than the year before.

Midlands, absolute dreadful. It's a really old tree that doesn't get much love but normally by now I'm hastily making jam just to deprive the wasps of the last few, they're still on the tree and pretty green at the moment too! I think if we have good weather this week we might get a few picked over the bank hol. The apple trees are terrible this year too, I've just got more blackberries than ever.

Not a single plum on ours. We usually have too many (and in fact still have some of last year's frozen!). N Yorks.

We have several mirabelle (cherry plum) trees. Currently laden but not quite ripe yet.

Mirabelles all over the shop here. And now the wasps have descended.

MIL had one single plum this year and she said that had a worm in it

Fantastic harvest this year on a 50year old tree. I'm giving away plums by the punnet load. Just made 4jars of plum jam and kilos of fruit still on the tree. I'm in Sheffield. Cold dry may followed by warm wet June, must have done it. Tree has failed to fruit for the 10years I've been here.
Had some surprise hedgerow quinces last year but none this year.
Blueberries have been dire and usually get tons.
Had a few apples on 8year old saplings but they all have brown spots so no good.

I think all berries have done well this year. I have a plum tree and a blueberry Bush and both are laden.

Plums mediocre but very wormy. But only 1 apple. Think the blossom got frozen with late frost. And the bad spring probably had an affect on the pollinators too.

Yorkshire here and we have (it feels like) billions of lovely shiny apples, a decent crop of plums, and just a measly handful of pears which all seem to have been eaten by insects or birds.

West of Scotland. 1 plum tree, 3 years old. 4 plums, and they taste wonderful. No fruit before this year.
We had a sunny May and June, and we watered every night.

My grandad used to say that trees don't bear fruit every year as otherwise, all the squirrels would have too much to eat and their numbers would rise. The trees talk to each other so they all produce lots or nothing to control the numbers. I loved him telling me this, it sounds magical!

Not a single one. A few tiny ones appeared and then shrivelled up and fell off along with the leaves. South Wales.

The apple situation is looking a bit better but nothing like last year when we had so many we were giving carrier bags full of them away to all and sundry!

I'm in France on holiday and at the gite there are about 10 trees groaning under the weight of plums, what can I make?

Last year's unseasonably hot April and May resulted in a bumper crop of plums for us, DH made jam* and one branch was so laden it actually broke off and crashed onto the pergola below. It was good to have edible fruit for a change and be able to use some, but there were far more than we could use and the tree was badly damaged by the branch breaking, it has a bad split in the trunk now.

This year we have lots of fruit but as usual they are going rotten on the tree, so very few salvageable ones. Ground underneath (underplanted with cyclamen as it's very dry shade there) is covered in rotting plums that are full of wasps (and other pollinating insects tbf, but we're not fans of wasps) and I am sick of it! I have already cleared three buckets of rotting plums and there's still loads in the tree.

I'm in France on holiday and at the gite there are about 10 trees groaning under the weight of plums, what can I make? They freeze well, but that's of no use to you. So jam, crumbles, pies, bottled in syrup (look up recipe). Fruit cheese, fruit leather.

There was a very late hard frost this Spring (in South of England anyway) which killed a lot of the blossom which goes on to form the fruit.

I have three! One of which dropped off before I noticed.
It is a small tree, but that is still a rubbish crop.

Not one 😔 South East

It performed well last year. Maybe it's having a rest 🙄

MereDintofPandiculation thank you