@Girly, sorry about the situation. I lost a Flavor King and spotted galls on a Candy Heart in my last home. I’m wondering what other rootstock should I try in the new home.
@bleedingdirt I know many folks are not fans of Marianna 2624 but all my plums on this rootstock are very healthy and have no issues - no crown gall, no suckering, no cankers, no gummosis. I transplanted them and the root system was huge and deep!
I regret not following Stan’s advice to avoid citation.
Many of my trees on Citation are not doing well and I think that at least for some of them this is caused by crown gall. According to the literature, all plums are susceptible to crown gall, but Citation especially so. Also, because trees on Citation are not very vigorous, the effect of crown gall is especially severe. I know that at least a couple (and probably more) of my trees on Myro 29C also have crown gall, but they have enough vigor to outgrow it.
Among plums, peaches, and apricots, plums are the most susceptible to crown gall and apricots the least. Therefore, one possible solution is to use apricot seedlings as rootstocks with appropriate interstem if needed. Myro can be grafted on apricot and all plums can be grafted on Myro. Pluots can be grafted directly on apricot, and Asian plums can be grafted on pluots. Adara or other myrobalans (including seedlings) as well as P. x dasycarpa probably can be also used for interstem instead of Myro 29C. I did not try this yet but I have pluots and myrobalans grafted on apricot, and these grafts seem to do well.
Interesting observation about Marianna 2624. Being essentially a plum, it should not be immune to crown gall. One possible explanation is that trees on Marianna came from a different nursery and didn’t have the infection. I’m pretty sure that some of my Dave Wilson trees on Citation came with the crown gall infection, as they showed symptoms very soon after planting.
Hi @Stan, What symptoms did you see soon after planting? My pluots and cots on Citation are very vigorous, I can hardly see any dwarfing effect.
Yes, your right! The Marianna plums came from Raintree and the rest of the plums from DWN.
Yes, thats what I observed with my trees as well.
Yes, thats what happened in my orchard as well - No apricots/peaches/nectarines had crown gall even though they were on citation. Only plums and roses. I am sure my ED must have come with C.Gall and spread to my roses 
It exhibited a lot of symptoms right after planting but the tree pulled thru and grew quite big inspite of the galls!
I’m in humid NY and much of what you say matches my experience also, although I’ve never tried Marianna rootsock- except that we’ve hand so much rain the last three years that the gall seems to be winning the war against my myro roots. Maybe it is the crazy rain, at least. The previous 24 years of growing plums on my property never stopped my myro trees even though the gall was around.
Usually they grow well during the first spring but start showing signs of decline in the summer and loose leaves earlier than normal in the fall, then die next year (typically, in the summer). The autopsy shows crown gall on the roots. Some others just continue struggling year after year, with a gradual decline.
I wonder where you have been getting your plum trees from… A couple of weeks ago I got an Empress plum tree on Marianna GF 8-1 from Cummins, and it had a Crown Gall as big as a lemon… The tree was a bigger tree and could have been in the ground for a couple of years before it was harvested. Younger, one year old trees could have infected roots with no visible galls yet…
@Stan evidently, Marianna is not really that resistant to Crown Gall…
As a datapoint, I found an 1inch-long crown gall on a root flare of a 2nd leaf Orange Red Apricot from ACN nursery…on (ironically) “Certified” Myro. I believe @alan uses ACN as well, and I wonder if ACN had been the source of the crown gall.
Tree is growing vigorously and my inclination is to leave it alone, but my concern is that It is 12 feet away next to a grouping of many other interspecific plums (on mostly citation stock).
Does anyone know how fast crown gall travels through soil or other mediums like nematodes or insects? I won’t be doing any planting or digging in that area there’s so low chance I’d spread the bacterium through orchard activities.
Long term I wonder if you abandon some of the nursery area and do several years of intensive cover cropping with mustards, then maybe you could get some of that land back into production. I know brassica cover crops have been used quite a bit as a bio-fumigant against a variety of fungal and bacterial issues. I couldn’t find anything specifically about use in areas with crown gall, but maybe worth a shot. If you can bio-fumigate those nursery areas with cover crops for a few years, then maybe you could start over with Marianna rootstock? That’s if you have virgin land to move your nursery to in the meantime of course.
Or whatever rootstock combination might you give you the best option at resistance.
Maybe worth trying Marianna 2624? I also wonder how using american plum as the rootstock would do with crown gall.
ACN sent out a ton of contaminated trees this season, apparently. I am doubtful they were unaware (hard to miss golf ball sized galls on a bare root tree) and this is very damaging to my own sense of the integrity of the nursery who I’ve done business with for about a quarter century.
I found 6 trees with crown gall- plums, apricots and a peach. Obviously the problem must have been wide spread.
My ACN Nectafest root flare on Bailey was also suspiciously bulbous and wouldn’t surprise me if it was also crown gall. It may explain why it grew so weakly for a peach.
I’ve only ordered twice from ACN in last 2 years. I feel disappointed at all the ACN stonefruit trees. The asian pears on Betulifolia are growing well however.
If you can identify CG on trees you receive upon opening the box, you can get a refund.