I have a plum tree with three plum varieties on it. The Superior plum limb has from what I can tell canker on it. Is the limb salvageable? Or should I saw the limb off to try to save the other grafts?
It’s hard to tell from the pictures but if the canker is localized it can be cut out. It looks like it might be all over the limb though, and in that case you probably need to remove the whole limb. You can always try cutting it out though, just cut back to wood thats not browned. You’ll know when you start cutting what I mean by brown wood, all the cankered wood will be brown colored.
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That junction looks pretty grim honestly. My instinct would be cut the limb now rather than wait. Once canker gets into a graft union it tends to travel fast, and one lost variety is better than losing the whole tree.
I’m with Scott on this. I had to cut out a huge area over a foot long and up to five inches wide on the main trunk of one of my old plum trees. It took a lot of carving to get to completely clean looking wood, but you’d almost never know it was there now. The wound has almost completely sealed up with new bark at this point, and the tree is in great shape overall.
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