Two Trees Lost

I’d noticed that two trees didn’t come through winter. They are both plum trees – the Laxton’s Gage and the Orleans plum. The symptoms were both died when very early in leaf – the leaves are tiny, at most 10mm long, most just buds. I suspected silverleaf disease, but I wonder whether they just died from frosts over winter. Whichever it is, they are now in the bin – very sad to pull up trees that are two years old, but we’ll replace them and see what happens. To replace them, in case it was a late frost that did for them, we have ordered a Greengage (Old) and a Belle de Louvain, both on St Julien A rootstock. This rootstock will allow us to train them into either a 10-12ft bush or  12-15ft half-standard, and both varieties are suitable for areas suffering from late frosts. That’s the theory anyway…