Many gardeners do not buy ready-made seedlings of fruit trees, but independently go all the way from a seed or seed to harvest. Plum can also be grown from the seed, although it will not always correspond to the original variety, but vaccination is much less difficult than getting a seedling.
Is it possible to grow fruiting plum from seed
To grow a seedling from seed, you have to work hard, but after 2 years there will already be a small tree. You can plant a seed immediately in a permanent place, and the tree will grow without transplanting. But there is a risk: after all, a bone may not germinate, and time will be spent. Therefore, the procedure is often carried out at home, growing seedlings in pots.
It is possible to grow a fruiting plum from the seed, but it is difficult to determine whether the fruits of the variety from which the seed was taken are obtained on the resulting tree. Therefore, rootstock is grown from plum seeds, and in a year or two it will be more reliable to plant a plum of the desired variety on it.
You should immediately get used to the idea that you will need to plant grafts of the desired grade of plum on a tree grown from seed
Plums can be grafted and not only on plums, but also on cherry plum, turn or thorns, apricot, peach.
Fruits brought from the southern regions to Central Russia, no matter how tasty they may be, are not suitable for the reproduction procedure: only seeds from plums of local varieties should be planted. And, since you must immediately assume the subsequent vaccination, you do not need to choose the most delicious varieties. The stone should be taken from weather resistant, unpretentious tree.
It may seem that the implementation of the vaccine will delay the receipt of the first crop for another couple of years. But this is a mistake! On the contrary, fruits from unvaccinated seedlings are often obtained even later than from vaccinations. Therefore, of course, you can experiment, but not worth it. In the end, for the sake of scientific interest, you can leave 1-2 lateral branches on the tree obtained from the seed, and re-graft the rest. Although most often the vaccine is performed already on a one-year-old, in a standard, not far from the soil surface.
How to grow plum from a stone in a garden
When planting bones directly in the garden, one must be prepared for the fact that mice can destroy them, so measures should be taken to scare them away. It helps, for example, to bury rags or paper soaked in tar next to the bones. Since bones undergo natural processes of scarification and stratification in natural conditions, their planting in the garden is not difficult.
Scarification is a partial violation of the seed coat to facilitate their swelling and germination, stratification is the long-term aging of seeds at a certain temperature to accelerate their germination.
If you decide to risk planting a bone immediately to a permanent place, dig a planting hole 60 x 60 x 60 cm in advance and fill it with fertilizers as for planting a seedling (1.5-2 buckets of manure, 200 g of superphosphate, 50 g of potassium sulfate). But it’s safer to plant a dozen seeds in the schoolhouse, and when some of them give sprouts, remove the extra ones and plant the good seedlings in permanent places after a year. Growing plums from the bones in the garden consists of the following steps:
- Bones extracted from ripe plums are washed, dried and stored until planting.
Bones for planting choose from ripe plums
- In the beginning of autumn they dig a shallow trench (15-20 cm). Its length depends on the number of seeds: they are planted at a distance of 20-30 cm from each other. Fertilizers do not apply. The trench is half filled with excavated soil (digging is only necessary to obtain a loose substrate), allowed to stand.
The trench should not be deep, it must be dug in a sunny area or in a small partial shade
- In the second half of October, seeds removed from ripe plums are planted so that when they are backfilled with soil, they are at a depth of 8-10 cm. Break the seeds, freeing the kernels from the shell, should not be planted in autumn.
- Bones fall asleep in loose soil. Watering plantings in the fall is not necessary. The emergence of seedlings is possible in May. If many seeds have sprouted, the extra shoots are not pulled out, but carefully cut out from the ground or, even better, underground, digging a little: otherwise, the root system of the left seedlings can be damaged. Seedlings care consists in systematic watering, loosening the soil and weeding.
If the seedlings are too frequent, they thin out
- After a year, in the spring, ready-made scions can be planted in a permanent place, and after another year, when they will already have several lateral branches, experiment with vaccinations. If it is supposed to be grafted with a graft, it is better to immediately grow a seed in a permanent place to vaccinate a one-year-old.
Kidney vaccination (budding) is performed in the summer, but this is a more jewelry operation than grafting.
Video: planting plum seed in the garden
How to grow plum in a pot
When growing plums from bone at home, you need to work harder, but the success of the event is higher.
Bone preparation
In order for the bones to reliably ascend at home, different from natural, they must first be prepared. Of course, only full bones are planted (if they do not sink in the water, then they are unsuitable for planting).
- Bones extracted from ripe plums are washed and individually wrapped in pieces of damp cloth, and then stacked in a refrigerator on a shelf with the lowest possible positive temperature. Staying for several months in the cold gives a "signal" to the seeds for germination.
- During storage in the refrigerator, make sure that the fabric is always wet. All the time of storage (until the end of winter) they observe the bones: if mold appears, they are washed well.
The purpose of stratification is to force the seeds to germinate in the spring
- Shortly before planting, you can stimulate the seeds to germinate, using Epin or Zircon solutions instead of water to wet them, diluting them according to the instructions.
Growth stimulants facilitate germination, but they must be used in the concentration recommended by the manufacturer
Some gardeners instead of moist tissue store the bones in wet sand or sawdust, but in this case you need a box that is put in the cellar and also systematically check the condition of the seeds and the humidity of the substrate.
Planting seeds
By the end of winter, the bones should swell, and their hard shell should crack. For planting, ordinary flower pots with a capacity of about 2 liters are suitable.
If the bones are swollen, but do not burst, you can help them by rubbing the outside with a file.
Landing is as follows:
- Soil consisting of sod land and river sand (1: 1) is poured into the pot, but first, drainage from fine pebbles or expanded clay is laid at the bottom.
Any flower pot with a diameter of at least 15 cm is suitable for planting a plum seed
- The seeds are planted to a depth of 3-4 cm, well watered and put the pots in a bright place at room temperature. If the pot is wide, you can plant 2-3 seeds in it (then the extra shoots are carefully removed with scissors).
If the root has already turned out to be long, you must try not to break it: first put a stone, and then gently fill it with soil
- Until seedlings appear, the soil is kept moist, preventing its souring.
After 2-4 weeks, seedlings appear with cotyledon leaves, similar to leaves of vegetable seedlings, and only then real elliptic leaves.
Seedling care
So that the seedlings do not stretch, they are kept in bright light, but fearing the ingress of direct rays that can burn the leaves. The first 7-10 days you need to maintain a temperature of 10-12aboutC, then you need a room. If the windowsill is northern, it is necessary to provide illumination with fluorescent lamps. Watered sparingly, avoiding the drying out of the soil, standing water at room temperature. If the room is too dry, periodically spray air near the pot.
After a month, the plum is fed with a complex mineral fertilizer (for example, azophos). After another month, top dressing is repeated. The soil is systematically loosened. By the end of spring, the tree can grow up to 0.5 m.
Already at the end of May, the seedling can be carefully planted in the garden if you remove it from the pot with an earthen lump without disturbing the root system. In warm regions, transplants can also be arranged in the fall, but in the middle lane they try not to plant plums for the winter.
If seedlings are kept at home for a long time, they should be periodically transplanted into larger pots.
Planting in the garden is carried out according to general rules and does not have features, but shortly before this, the drain must be hardened. Already planted seedlings are planted in the garden.
Growing plums from seed in various regions
The principles of growing plum from seed at home are practically independent of the region, only the choice of variety is important. Only zoned varieties with sufficient winter hardiness and drought tolerance are suitable. In Siberia and even in the middle lane, one should not try to plant plums of southern varieties. Plum bones are traditionally planted in the middle lane:
- Minsk
- Volga beauty
- Belarusian.
In arid regions, Eurasia and Morning are doing well. And in Siberia it is better to plant universal varieties with high frost resistance:
- Ussuri
- Chinese early
- Manchurian beauty.
The same choice is true when growing seedlings directly in the garden. Here, only the choice of a site for planting seeds depends on the region. The school should be divided on the warmest side of the site. And if in the south of our country or in most of Ukraine you can not worry about the possibility of non-preservation of stratified seeds in the soil, then when they are planted in autumn in cold regions, the planting site should be well mulched with a layer of peat or humus.
The features of growing plum seeds in Siberian conditions are described in sufficient detail in the available literature. So, it is recommended not only to remove plums for this purpose in conditions of complete botanical ripeness, but also to allow them to lie down to the deadline and only then remove the seeds. After washing and slightly drying them, the bones are kept until planted in tightly tied plastic bags, where they ripen.
Sowing seeds in Siberia is carried out both in the traditional way (in autumn) and in spring (and during the winter, natural stratification of the bones occurs when they are buried in the ground in linen bags). Spring planting in Siberia is considered more reliable. Autumn planting is carried out just before the frost, and spring planting after drying of the soil after snow has melted. Bones are planted in well-fertilized ridges according to the pattern of 40 x 15 cm with hacked roots down to a depth of 2-3 cm, mulched with a thin layer of humus.
Care for sprouting plums in Siberia does not differ from the generally accepted. But in mid-August, all the shoots must be nipped, they are allowed to prepare for winter. The weakest seedlings are removed because they will not survive the next winter or survive, but will be weak, they will later bear fruiting. Plums are transplanted to a permanent place at the age of 2.
Growing a plum from a stone is not difficult, but troublesome. If you do this directly in the garden, the process requires a minimum of costs, but is associated with a certain risk. At home, the probability of success is higher, but the technology involves the constant participation of the gardener in the life of the pet.
