A compact, low fruit tree with the ridiculous name Plum of Candy was bred by Michurin breeders.
This culture is adapted for successful fruiting in risky farming areas and has a whole range of advantages, among which the main knowledgeable gardeners consider the excellent fruit taste, excellent decorativeness and unpretentiousness. We will talk about the features of the variety, cultivation agricultural technology and the required care in this publication.
Candy plum: description
The elegant decorativeness of a tree reaching no more than 2.5 m in height will perfectly fit into any garden landscape, transforming and decorating it: in spring with boiling white blossoms, and by mid-summer with garlands of ripening lilac-red fruits. Starting the description with the general appearance of the plant, we add that a neat rounded crown with delicate dark green foliage gives it a special elegance.
Good frost resistance allows the culture to endure all the hardships of harsh Russian winters. With a sufficiently high snow cover, twenty-degree frosts are not afraid of the plant: the root system and flower buds will not be affected. In addition, Candy plum is valued for a very high degree of resistance to traditional diseases and pests, which saves the gardener from additional protective procedures.
Grade Features
In a few years, a fast-growing plant turns into a young tree with a beautiful crown and begins to bear fruit.
Good timely care will provide a very high yield: Candy plum gives good yields - up to 25 kg from an adult tree. The shelf life of the fruits is low, but their early appearance and excellent taste do their job - the crops are quickly eaten. The Plum Candy variety opens the fruit season, gardeners always like the early ripening of fruits and the general unpretentiousness of the culture.
Being self-infertile, this variety requires a productive neighborhood with other representatives of the species, the flowering period of which coincides with the flowering of the Konfetnaya plum variety . Pollinators for it are plum-shaped plums, Collective farm greenhouse, Early Zarechnaya.
Fruit
The enormous advantage of candy plum is its early maturity: the crop ripens by the end of July. This ultra-early dessert variety is famous for the extremely sweet taste of thin-skinned fruits, their yellow-honey pulp and excellent appearance.
Large burgundy-red drupes are covered with a pronounced bluish coating, which gives them a certain appeal. Reaching 30-35 g of weight, fruits with a delicate sweet taste are an excellent delicacy, and not only. Saturation with valuable amino acids, sugars and vitamins improves the activity of various body systems - cardiac, blood vessels, gastrointestinal tract, etc.
Experienced gardeners claim that there are no particular difficulties in growing this fruit tree. We will clarify the main stages of agricultural technology for cultivating crops and caring events.
Culture preferences
Like many stone fruit crops, plum trees require sun-heated areas without a close occurrence of groundwater for good development. Konfetnaya plum prefers air- and permeable loams or clays with a neutral or alkaline reaction. Excessive acidity of the soil during planting is eliminated by adding 500 g of lime, dolomite flour or ash to the planting pit. Trees are planted, given the prevailing garden interior and remembering the stunted tree. Young plants are planted on the south side of existing plantings, maintaining an interval between them of 3-4 meters.
The root system of plums, which can penetrate quite deeply, in the climate of temperate latitudes is located superficially, occupying the entire circumference under the crown or slightly going beyond its borders.
Caring for a tree is simple: regular loosening of the soil in the tree circle, sanitary and forming clippings and irrigation. This culture is hygrophilous, but it is afraid of stagnation of water: excess moisture causes root decay and weakens the tree.
Plum planting
The best planting time is considered to be early spring, since in the autumn young trees do not always have time to grow stronger and subsequently freeze out. But seedlings planted before winter are able to successfully survive the cold if they are covered with spruce branches, ruberoid or spandbond.
Landing pits with a size of 0.5 * 0.6 m are prepared in advance. The upper fertile soil layer is mixed with humus (10 kg), superphosphate (200 g), urea (70 g). With this mixture, the pit is filled to a third of the height. Experienced gardeners recommend installing a strong stake in the center of the pit - a kind of support for the tree. After that, a seedling is placed in the pit, the roots of which are carefully straightened, covered with prepared soil, and the soil is carefully compacted.
The root neck of a seedling is left just above the soil level, it is not buried in order to avoid bark aging and disturbances in the sap flow system. After planting, the young plant is generously watered (20-30 liters of water), after having previously built an earthen roller around the circumference of the trunk circle, which minimizes moisture loss. Next, the soil around the plant is mulched, and the seedling is tied to a stake, leaving it free to move.
After landing care
In spring, the soil under the overwintered plant is carefully loosened, preventing intense evaporation. They dig the soil in near-stem circles to a depth of 8 cm, around the crown circumference - 10-12 cm, between the rows of trees - 20-25 cm. In order not to damage the roots, they put a shovel to the trunk when digging.
Watering and dressing rules
Plum planting is accompanied by abundant watering. The laying of flower buds and the formation of fruits also require a fairly large amount of water. Usually, fruit trees are watered 3-5 times per season, but in dry periods, the soil is moistened more often.
But the plant is very restrained to fertilizers. The first 2-3 years, the drain is content with a supply of food, which is laid in the landing pit. Starting from the 3-4th year, high-quality organic matter (3-5 buckets of humus), 300 g of superphosphate and 200 g of potassium salt are added to the trunk circles for digging.
The tree is fed with nitrogen fertilizers in the spring during the first cultivation of the soil in the garden, with phosphorus-potassium - before flowering.
An important aspect of care is cleaning the weed circle and loosening the soil to increase aeration. Mulching will allow to retain moisture in the soil and significantly reduce the gardener's labor costs: watering and weeding will be less necessary.
Periodic removal of the emerging root shoots and sanitary and forming pruning of the crown of the tree will help maintain the fruiting fruiting of the Candy plum.
These are the features of caring for a fruit tree with the children's name Plum Candet. The reviews of gardeners growing this plum are unanimous: an excellent variety with sweet thin-skinned fruits, unpretentious and decorative, is a good option from the point of view of early harvesting and aesthetics of the garden composition.