Plum tree problem

[cristalfiona]

I've been meaning to post this for months, but I'm behind with everything this year. I planted a maiden plum tree in a large pot last year and got some leaves off it. This spring it had what looked like buds, but never grew any new leaves and had what looked like brown sap along the branches - probably about April/May time.

Does anyone know what this is (was) and if there's any way to save the tree? It hasn't done anything all summer, no new growth at all...

[FB.]

Sounds like a fatal case of canker.

[cristalfiona]

Yes, looking at the RHS website I think you're probably right. I was worried it might be something fatal, but hoping it wouldn't be. It says you can sometimes stop it by pruning back to healthy wood, but I think mine might be too far gone for that.

If I was to get rid of it and get a new tree would I have to do anything in particular to make sure the new one didn't get it too?

[ESBkevin]

Don't reuse the same soil, thoroughly clean/disinfect the pot. covering the plant over winter with fleece/polythene can help and there are commercial sprays that can be applied which tend to be copper based. The canker lives in the bark.

[fishpond]

It suggests to me that it was really stressed, lack of food/water etc.
Where was it purchased?

[yummersetter]

Buy it elsewhere.

[FB.]

If you buy the same variety to replace it (e.g. replace Victoria with another Victoria) you may end up with the same problem due to your garden now potentially being contaminated with a strain of canker which is lethal to at least the variety you bought and possibly some other varieties, especially related varieties.

[FB.]

Buy it elsewhere.

Agreed. Don't buy from 'dirty' suppliers.
If one tree from a particular nursery brought a disease with it, similar trees from the same nursery are at high risk of the same problem. Possibly the whole batch produced by that nursery will be infected. Possibly that variety at that nursery has become ungrowable due to disease.

The 'cleanest' trees I've been supplied with in the past have come from Keepers Nursery, although it has been a few years since I last had anything from them so I can't comment on what things are like now.
I don't recall a single tree from Keepers bringing canker or any other disease with it, nor subsequently developing canker on stems which grew in the nursery (that's where latent nursery-acquired canker can appear up to five years after planting).
Some other nurseries have in the distant past supplied me with trees with visible canker and sometimes multiple cankers, and sometimes both visible canker and visible crown rot on one tree!

[cristalfiona]

I don't know exactly where the trees came from as my Mum bought them (apple and a cherry too) in the end, but I did all the research first and gave her the information, so I know it will have been one of the better nurseries.

It's quite possible that it could be stress introduced by me, as although they're in (large) pots I have pretty much left my fruit trees to their own devices, apart from pruning and a deep watering when it's been dry.

It is a Victoria, which I've read in my research is particularly susceptible. I was intending to cut it down and bin it this weekend then leave it until next year and get a different variety from somewhere else, but now I think I'll ask my mum where she got them from and contact them first, just in case there's anything they can/will do.