I’m not too surprised by that given that it is an eastern US species. Why bother with suckering, thorny P. americana if you are in CA?
I looked in the Fedco catalog and they do mention that P. americana can be used as a peach rootstock. So in addition to the above post suggesting they may be putting their peaches on american plum, they are also suggesting it as a peach rootstock. One would think if it showed delayed compatibility they wouldn’t be doing it.
I’m going to try to graft Contender peach to P. americana suckers this spring.
I will update as my test subjects mature…one more year in the nursery, then they will get planted out. In the meantime, I’ll be grafting more peach on plum this spring.
I have 1 AM plum stock that I’d love to try grafting peach onto. I have a Reliance & Red Haven, I’m in Z5B, anyone have a good tasting northern hardy peach scion they wouldn’t mind sharing?
I’m not positive mine is pure p americana (it was from an alderman seedlings, but looks exactly like wild plum leaf/shape/etc) and mine has never suckered. Mine flowered/fruited Saturn peach last summer just fine. Good rootstock for these colder areas me thinks…plus it doesn’t seem to get hit with borers like my peach seedlings (which get hit super hard).
I will say that the wood is very weak…as in heavy winds…the branches will just tear…so keeping crotch angles good and making sure to not let branches over fruit/short is probably good thing to watch for.
That’s what I was going to comment on. You put peaches on wild plums and borers get “stumpified” and usually don’t bother the peach tree (according to a local friend here in IL.)
Here is the same Fantasia tree now. It is probably a little over 3’ tall and 2’ diameter. I had to fence them because a deer mowed them back early on. I hope they do well, because I’m loving the results so far. Plum roots perform much better than peach roots in my landscape.
P americana has worked as rootstock for hybrid plums for a few years, most are p salicina x p americana. Peaches and nectarine grew well on p americana in the nursery last year, no peaches yet though!
I have Lovell, Myro, and P Americana this year for a variety of peaches, plums, pluots, apricots, nectarine scions. I’m trying to decide on what will go on what. I have some pluots I really don’t want to take a chance on and am thinking they may be best grafted to the Myro. I know you’ve work with a bit or all of these stone fruits…
I am not an expert, but my advice would be to put your peaches, nects, apricots on lovell,
euro plums, pluots on myro, and hybrid plums on p americana.
Not sure if Mustang (cherry-plum) is available in the USA but could be interesting to you. I have had pretty easy propagation of cherry plums by rooting hardwood cuttings so this could be easy for personal/noncommercial use and Mustang is listed as compatible with MANY stonefruit and hardy to zone 2 without the problems of suckers or incompatibility of P. americana and P. besseyi. No mention of cherry compatibility though.
P.S. I have no affiliation with breeder or nurseries.
Botanical name: Prunus x ‘Jefchum’
Origin: ‘Mustang’ is a complex Prunus hybrid with demonstrated potential for wide use as a clonal understock. It has proven effective for budding various Prunus cultivars (both fruiting and ornamental types) throughout North America. It is bud compatible with P. armeniaca (Apricot), P. salicina (Japanese Plum), P. Americana (American Plum), P. persica (Peach) and possibly other related stocks including Thundercloud.
Hardiness: Zone 2 (Canadian and USDA)
Description: Mustang™ has several advantages over other existing rootstocks:
o clonal rootstock with consistent budding results
o non-suckering understock (in contrast to P. americana)
o no basal suckering (in contrast to P. besseyi)
o fibrous root that provides strong anchorage (in contrast to P. besseyi)
o certified virus free from tissue culture
o wide compatibility across Prunus species
o ease of propagation from softwoods or tissue culture
Problem is I can’t find any info other than from the breeder so you are always left wondering is this marketing vs reality. That said http://www.whiffletreefarmandnursery.ca/catalogue.php has many different trees grafted to it for sale this year.
I have Blackice on Mustang for the last 2 years but too early to tell really.
Last link is some other nursery making stuff up as usual. Crosses are Japanese plum, American Plum and Western Sand Cherry per the gov documents. Probably a American plum x Chum (cherry-plum) cross. Why some nursery person decided to add apricot in the title? No idea. Goes to show you need to go to the plant patent/breeder source for real info.
I have about 10 apricot seedlings going. They should be big enough to bud by late summer…so i might put various things on them and see what happens. Another good possibility is pluot. They are very fast growing seedlings and seem to work with plums, cots and from what i can tell so far, peaches. I believe the pluot seedlings i’m using are mostly flavor king…but not positive on that.
I found this thread after doing some research about some plums that I transplanted today. My wife found them near a barn on someone’s we know property about a mile from here. She asked the owner if he minded if she dug some seedlings up and he said go ahead. So, she came home yesterday with maybe four seedlings, already in bloom.
Only two of them had decent roots on them so, that’s what I planted today. The tallest is about 6ft tall, and the other about 5ft. She said they’re some kind of red plum, and that they used to grow here on this farm many years ago. The fruit starts green but turns red, and can be quite tasty, according to her.
I noticed that they had some nasty long thorn-like protuberances on the branches. So, I googled this and I think we have some American Plum, aka Wild Plum, aka Prunus Americana.
Reading this thread excites me because if there are more of these seedlings to be had, and the fact they are compatible with peaches, I’d like to maybe topwork these seedlings with some cuttings off my peaches in the future.
Right now, I’m just going to let them get used to their new home, just hope they’ll survive the transplant. I did a bit of pruning to them, hope I didn’t cut off too much. I’ll post some pics of them in a bit.
I will be grafting plums soon . I have a row of wild Chickasaw seedlings I will graft will graft Waneta , Shiro and Hollywood to them . I plan to graft close to the ground so I can get the scions to root in time . I want own root trees that hopefully sucker some .
I know that this is an old thread that’s been resurrected a couple of times, but I’m very interested and would like to continue the discussion. I just picked up 5 prunus americana seedlings and planted them in pots. I’m thinking I’d like to grow them one full year (they’re little 2-3’ feathered seedlings now, very thin diameter) and graft peaches or plums to them next spring. The problem that I have is that I’ve never successfully done any grafting (I’ve made a couple of half-hearted attempts that didn’t take. Cleft grafting looks very simple to me and since I don’t want the wild plums at all, just the rootstock, that’s what I really had in mind. I figured I’d cut the rootstock 6-10" from the ground and cleft graft a similar sized scion onto it. Will that work? Assuming that the graft takes, should I grow it out in pots for that season and then transplant to the orchard in the fall?
