How to Grow a Plum Tree From Pit

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Charles Boning, author of Florida's Best Fruiting Plants. I'm talking to you today, from Jene's Tropicals, and we're going to talk about growing a plum tree from a pit, and I'm standing between two nice plum trees here. It's relatively easy to grow a plum from a pit, although most commercial plums are reproduced by budding. When you select a plum, you take the pit out of it. You make sure you clean the pit thoroughly of all debris, and then what you do, is you set it in a pail of water. Those pits that float are generally to be discarded, they won't germinate. Those that sink, are usually viable seeds. At that point, what you want to do, is if you're up north, you want to plant the plant outside, after the first frost, about three inches deep, and you may need to cover it with some sort of a hard wire cloth or something like that, to prevent the squirrels from getting at it. If you live however in Florida, Hawaii, or Southern California, where you don't get a whole lot of cold temperatures, you can still grow a plum from a pit, and the way you do it, is through cold stratification. Essentially what that requires, is you place the pit in stagnant moss and sand, or some other medium, you put it in sealable plastic baggies, stick it in the refrigerator, for from six to eight weeks. After that, you simply plant it in the ground, or plant it out in the greenhouse, and in another two years or so, you'll have nice plum plants like this. I'm Charles Boning, and that's how you plant a plum from a seed."