I have a 4 year old yum yum nectarine tree that set it’s first heavy crop this season. Being overly excited about the fruit and also lacking experience, I guess I didn’t thin the fruit very much (they were pulling the branches down). And then yesterday this happened:
I’m feeling pretty awful about the whole thing and wondering what, if anything, can be done to rescue enough of the tree to matter. Looking for any and all advice. It has been a very vigorous grower (started as an 18" whip) but I don’t know if it’s worth keeping after this, or if I will need to remove it and plant again (and wait 4 years…). If it were you, what would you do?
Thanks in advance for the help! Now I’ll go try to do a better job thinning my plums.
If it was my tree, since the cambium looks like it’s still attached and in good shape, I would try to wood glue the woody tissue back together then join the sides back together with at least two bolt-washer-tree-washer-nut combos. The bots would be there permanently. If you attempt this fix, do not under any circumstance sever the cambium at the bottom of the split. You’ll likely need a second pair of hands to help you.
It may end up looking like a franken-tree, but I think you have a good chance to save the limb.
I second this idea.
I would cut broken limb to reduce weight and use good stainless collar clamps like this one Roadformer 3" T-Bolt Hose Clamp -… Amazon.com to secure it back in place and see what happens within next year.
Agree this limb is salvageable take some props asap to get it close to closing that break gap, then use strong rope to pull its limbs back towards the center and secure them to the opposite side scaffolds. You should be able to close that gap with the ropes. Once you have the gap closed use some strong plastic to seal the wound so that the cambium can grow back to the opposite side of the wound, this will take a couple of years but the tree can do it. Then you need to redo all your ropes using something soft between the ropes and tree bark to assure you don’t damage the bark as you retighten the ties that are pulling the scaffolds together. One of the best devices to tighten your ropes is a rubber tarp strap, once you have it in place to pull the ropes together, it can keep a great amount of tension on your rope ties.
Once this is done and the limb cannot be moved by winds or fruit load, use rubber electrical tape to retighten the wound again pulling the tape over the plastic sealer as tight as you can without breaking the tape.
By end of the growing season your limb will be well on the way to repairing, but you need to remove the tapes and plastics covering the wound and determine if they need to be redone.
Best wishes to recovery
Dennis
Kent, wa
What could possibly be done,once the branch gets placed back into position and secured,is do some bridge grafts.Maybe two on each side of the break.
I’d use Plum wood,since the success rate is better,at least for me.Split a scion down the middle and cut a slot into the trunk,so that the cambiums touch.The scions could even be screwed on(temporarily?)
Raccoons did this to a Flavor King branch last year.I let it rest on a metal shed,next to the tree.There is even a fruit growing now.
I’ve used a ratchet strap in addition to a clamp to fix a similar breakage (caused by me, not the fruit load) on my apple tree. A clamp was removed within 4 month or so, ratchet strap is still in place (2nd year). Not sure if I still need it, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Ratchet strap I used - Amazon.com
I think Brady’s idea about a bridge graft makes a lot of sense! If you are successful getting that scaffold back in place and secured. I would find a greenwood peach or nectarine limb, expose the green cambium on the middle (central leader) and carve out oval shaped cambium connections to fit around that exposed cambium, then do the same on the broken scaffold, use strong wood screws to attach both ends and to the two scaffolds, wrap both grafts with plastic strips to seal the graft unions. Then I would do the same treatment between the central leader and that scaffold on left side of the photo. Once the bridge grafts are well established it will greatly increase the fruit bearing capacity of those joints. Meanwhile place a strong post under that left scaffold to prevent similar breakage. You have several good ideas posted, all have potential, so let us know your outcome!
Best wishes
Dennis
Kent, wa
Here’s an idea to join the tears, do you think it’d work? Take a the bark off a young branch creating a “cambium tape”, then , scratch the cambium on trunk both sides of the tear, and use the “cambium” tape on the exposed trunk. Then wrap it with cling wrap or grafting tape.
Thanks so much everyone! I’m glad to hear that there is some hope yet. Unfortunately, due to travel, I probably won’t be able to work on the tree until mid-next week (really wish I could get to it sooner…I just can’t), but I’m ordering the materials suggested and will come up with a plan. Probably something along the lines of lighten the broken section significantly, pull it up with a ratchet strap or ropes and close the gap as much as possible (use wood glue between the two interior woody tissue regions?), try the cambium tape idea at the tear, then seal it with electrical or grafting tape and cling wrap and hope for the best.
As someone who has never performed any kind of graft this seems like a pretty advanced level first attempt but I’m up for the challenge.
Thanks again everyone, I’ll post updates as I have them.
If wood glue is used,make sure it doesn’t get squeezed out,into the bark areas.That might get in the way of possible cambium contact and the branch healing.
That’s a one in a million shot. It won’t work. And I’m not really a fan of all this bolting things back together. The limb broke out for a reason: it was a weak branch union. Maybe you can glue and tie things back together. But you could also just grow new wood. Nectarines grow fast. The tree will regrow new wood to replace that lost. Train it in a manner to form a strong tree.
A three year old tree that is rapidly growing is the perfect candidate for growing a new tree. This time with a strong structure. Chop off the weak old limb.
If you do try tying it back together forget grafting to make it stronger. Just use rope to tie the broken limb to the upper part of what’s left. Those type of grafts are all very suspect. Any movement during healing will cause the graft to fail.
You know, we have a reliant peach, and due to too many fruit, we lost about a third of the tree last year. It just got too heavy, and we had thinned enough, nor supported enough. We cut off the big branch, and the tree is doing great this year. A little lopsided, but I imagine it will fill in the empty space in a few years. I would not give up on the tree…
Well… Bad news. My attempt to lift the fallen limb failed miserably. It was at a tricky angle and even with the winch, I ended up tearing the limb off, leaving a strip of bark and cambium on the tree and the rest of the limb on the ground (no additional flap torn from the tree side though). I ended up putting two bolts in where the split occurred, exposing a small bit of fresh cambium on the remaining limb, and bringing the cambium flap that had been on the fallen limb up and against it, then wrapping it all in tape. No idea if it’ll recover, just have to wait and see i guess. I was thinking I might take some cuttings from the fallen limb and see if I can get them to root. If the tree survives, maybe it’ll send out a shoot on now-bare side of the base and I can get something that looks like a U.
The fruit are getting moldy quickly but I’m guessing if I had sprayed that would have helped… The unripe fruit still make a great jam…
