Is this plum canker?

[mosstrooper]

Hi to all, i recently(March) planted a couple of fruit trees, one a Victoria plum,the other a Damson, both on Pixy rootstock.

I did notice at the time that the plum had a bleeding wound in the bark but didn't really pay that much notice. Both trees took well once the roots got going and are going great guns. However, while learning how to care for plum trees on this great forum i have come across some horror stories concerning plum diseases and in particular, canker! Not a great photo but this is my plum tree today

[boundtothesoil]

The photo is a bit blurry. Although bleeding wounds on plum trees can arise from several causes, I'd say you've got 'canker'.

You could leave it and see if the tree survives. I have a mature Victoria plum tree carrying many small cankers and many bleeding areas on various branches, but overall it's healthy and has yielded well for many years. Alternatively, you could cut the cankered branch out now, hoping it hasn't spread too far downwards. See what others say here.

[FB.]

It might be canker.
It would be helpful to see a less blurred picture and to see a bit more of the stem and shoots near the canker to get an overall feel for what's going on - take another picture from up to twice as far away as the first one.

[mosstrooper]

Thanks for the replies guys, i've taken some more pictures this morning.

[FB.]

It could be canker, or it could be a peculiar wound. The damaged twig and ragged edges to the 'wound' makes me wonder if the tree suffered some kind of impact damage.
If the variety is Victoria it makes canker (and canker infection of its wound) more likely.

Whatever it is, there's nothing you can do because the canker is too large relative to the size of the tree to be able to cut it out without ruining the tree shape.
If it is canker it'll gradually go around the stem, cut off the sap to everything above will die.

[mosstrooper]

Thanks for that. The damaged twig is the result of a grandson and his football but it is dead wood anyhow and the damaged bark is down to me peeling sap from the trunk.
I was going to lop off the top and see how it grew from there, but as you say it's going to ruin the shape of the tree.

[FB.]

Ah, so the 'wound' is not entirely 'natural'.
In that case I would leave the tree and see how things go because it might just be leaking sap from a wound. Stone fruit and grapes will ooze or even dribble sap when wounded.

The worst case is that it is canker and it dies, but to be honest a sick young tree is often best replaced with a different variety or in a different bit of soil rather than persevered with because sometimes the disease has spread to other parts of the tree and every year it'll keep popping up here and there until the tree is a mutilated, scarred mess or has died.

I have a 'zero tolerance' policy with my young trees where I promptly remove and replace if they are clearly diseased, or if they fail to thrive (less than six inches of new growth), or if they have small leaves, or if the leaves show unusual colour tinges in autumn.
I have a cheap supply of trees in that I graft my own. You can buy rootstocks for about £2-3 each and graft them yourself. St.Julien A rootstock is a medium-vigour plum tree. Pixy rootstock is a dwarf bush. Brompton rootstock makes a large vigorous plum tree. Myrobalan rootstock - if you can get it - makes a very vigorous large tree.

From my experience of semi-bulk quantities of nursery trees which are unsprayed and generally left to do their own thing after being planted, I'd say that about a quarter of them suffer badly from canker-like diseases in the first couple of years (including certain types of canker which 'invisibly' attack the roots below ground) - these diseases having been acquired in the nursery and become 'latent'/'suppressed' by sprays but break out once spraying has stopped. Main stem cankers have been scientifically proven to be mostly nursery-acquired, since many cankers enter either a wound, a pruning cut or one of the trees numerous leaf 'scars' in autumn on the wood which grew that year; the canker breaking-out the following year. With so many different varieties in their stock, nurseries are a perfect breeding ground for many diseases.

Back on-topic.......if you lop off the top it's going to be difficult to re-train it - and if you lop off the top now it'll lose all the resources it has spent the last three months putting into those new leaves and shoots.

Stone fruits are best pruned early in spring, just as the buds swell and show hints of green but before much shoot growth gets underway. You can also prune them in mid-summer (July-August) but that kind of pruning is reserved for plants which are out of control and/or need to be kept within a certain space.
Even then, older wood must never be pruned into in summer because of shock effects that can kill the tree. There are exceptions that are OK for summer pruning, such as removal of a small percentage of the branches - say up to a quarter - and/or to cut out disease which threatens the tree.

[mosstrooper]

Thanks for taking the time to type out such a long, helpful reply FB.
The wife has convinced me to give the tree a while longer to live so for now i have pruned off the two dead twigs and painted all the wounds with tree paint. I will however order another tree(from a different supplier) and keep it in a container,just in case.

[FB.]

Thanks for taking the time to type out such a long, helpful reply FB.
The wife has convinced me to give the tree a while longer to live so for now i have pruned off the two dead twigs and painted all the wounds with tree paint. I will however order another tree(from a different supplier) and keep it in a container,just in case.

If it's a common variety you might be able to pick up an identical tree next spring for a few pounds in the usual end-of-winter sale. Anywhere from Aldi, Lidl, Homebase or even Tesco may have them around March-April but as they're so cheap they don't hang around long.

Around December-January Blackmoor often have rootstocks for sale which you can graft yourself:
Rootstocks - For grafting & budding your own fruit trees - Buy Online

[mosstrooper]

Update

Just a quick update from last year.
This gradually worsened until the Autumn when i gave the tree a copper spray in October and again in November.
Hope this helps someone out.