I can't say I have ever seen what might appear as a healthy plum tree. Forum home › Fruit & veg. If possible, get rid of the most heavily affected leaves and burn them. Any ways. But decided not to as my hubby might think I’m obsessed with planting fruit trees as I already have 2 apples and a pear tree and 3 newly planted blueberries. . Start picking in late July and can be picked over a period of a few weeks meaning that there will not be glut of fruit. I need some help please ! worth waiting an extra year before it begins to bear fruit when compared with the Victoria plum which will be a year earlier to fruit? If you have not seen any flowers I would image this is what has happened because even if frost kills the flowers or bud, you can normally still see them. Please note we do not supply ready trained trees; this Opal is a young tree suitable for training yourself, in situ. Fan trained Plum trees are used against a wall; you will need not less than 180 x 180cm’s for a fan or espalier tree. VVA-1 Opal - 1 Year old, Bareroot Is the quality of the fruit, i.e. Opal is probably the best-flavored early plum variety - indeed it is sometimes called a gage-like plum thanks to the excellence of its flavor. Early flowering - … some times if a plum tree or any fruit tree which bears lots of fruit one year then in the following year the tree can just be playing catch up and getting its strength back. It is important to prune your plum tree for the first few years after planting to ensure a healthy, balanced shape. Then as soon as the remaining leaves fall, gather them up and also burn them. Such trees usually settle to cropping within 2 or 3 seasons. Opal is an early variety and the best in this class. It is of a medium size with dusky mottled red fruit which have a heavy bloom turning blue when overripe. Straight after planting, remove the lowest laterals and prune the rest back to about 10-15cm in length. Even though Opal Plum Tree is a popular choice for its sweet, juicy fruits, growing this tree can have ornamental benefits as well. I have an 8 year old plum tree ( Variety Opal) from which we need to remove a large branch ( approx size of lower arm in diameter) as this will impede a gate. I don't think the supplier would like to have your reshaping of this plum be a long-drawn-out saga on this forum . Plum trees can be fan-trained, or pruned to have bushy or pyramid form. However the flavor depends crucially on developing sugars during the short growing period, and in northern gardens Opal really benefits from being grown in a … Opal plum was raised at the Horticultural Research Station, Alnarp, Sweden in 1925 from a cross between Oullin's Gage and Early Favourite. Medium sized, oval-oblong … This was the taken from Blackmoors' website about the tree: "1 x Plum Opal Krimsk 1 (V V A 1) - 1 Year Maiden Bare Root Adjust the maintenance practices according to the desired shape. it's taste, inherent natural disease resistance, etc. Plum Opal, grafted on cherry plum seedlings, begins fruiting in the third year after planting, and grafted on Hungarian Wangeheim in the second year. To be honest. . There was Opal plum there but my previous research told me Victoria plum is a much better option. OPAL Characteristics Opal is considered to be one of the most reliable of all the early dessert plums. I created this video with the YouTube Video Editor (http://www.youtube.com/editor) 10 January in Fruit & veg. Cheers! The tree turned out to be medium-tall, up to three meters high. In essence, is it worth waiting another year for Opal plums, rather than Victoria's? Your tree should have one central leader and several strong side shoots. Superrad49 Posts: 33. 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