What are the grafting options for purple leaf plums? My sister has 5 purple leaf plums as ornamentals and they are very pretty in bloom and throughout the summer. They are about 10 years old and have produced small 1" fruit 3 of those 10 years.
Since its Prunus can asian plums, pluots, peach, or apricots be grafted to it? I’ll have extra scionwood and she wants to see if anything usable would grow on those trees.
I’ve never done it but my money would be on Japanese plums being the best bet. That’s what I used on prunus besseyi and most took.
I have a purple leaf plum that I use as my “frankentree” It probably has 30-40 grafts on in. Japanese plums, pluots and plumcots do great. Peaches and apricot grafts will take but on mine they only seem to grow a few inches. Here’s a picture of mine, as you can see there aren’t many purples leaves left
Tree looks great steve. How old is the tree and the grafts?
The tree has been in the ground 6 years and I started grafting over it 3 years ago
I can say from experience that the Hesse Weinberger plumcot does really well if cleft grafted onto p. cerasifera.
I also tried grafting Methley asian plum, Spring Satin plumcot, and Mirabelle de Nancy onto cerasifera as well, but the grafts failed (probably due to my own shortcomings in executing the grafts instead of any incompatibility concerns).
Some people say that cerasifera is the same or similar to Myrobalan plum stock. So anything listed as Myro compatible should work.
I plan to try grafting some straight-up apricots onto cerasifera this spring, including OrangeRed, Katy, and Amadiocot. Wish me luck…
