Is Nichols plum European or Japanese? It is listed as both different vendors. I want to be sure that I locate it appropriately for pollination.
From the limited pictures on a few nursery’s websites,the leaves look like those of an Asian Plum.
Really curly leaves on my Weeping Santa Rosa plum tree. Some branches aren’t so bad. Leaves also tend to be very weak and slightly translucent. Don’t remember the new growth looking like this in years past.
I ripped off a few and don’t see aphids, etc.
Any ideas what this could be?
You sure about the aphids? Are you checking the undersides of the leaves? The curling suggests aphids, and while I can’t quite make it out, I can imagine that I see a couple of green peach aphids on the bottom of the leaf at the upper left of the photo.
If it’s not that, might it be frost damage? We did have a pretty cold snap here in the Bay Area before the last rain, and that growth is young enough to be pretty tender.
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Its kind of got a herbicide or an aphid look to me
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I am 100% with @RichardRoundTree , but I sure hope we are wrong. Most have seen my story, but here it is. You might like seeing the photos. Most people assume herbicides would just cause leaves to wilt, turn yellow, and/or fall off. But 2, 4-D actually leaves them green but causes them to grow in an accelerated. curly shaped way- at least for a while. Note the photos in the first post on my thread.
Good luck! Hope we are wrong and it is aphids or something else.
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I also suspect herbicide damage.
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Just to be sure,spread apart some of the curled leaves and look with a magnifying glass if possible,as the Aphids are fairly small.
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Can anyone advise me on the cold hardiness of Adara/Puente plum? I’m in 5b.
OK, I’d love to hear what you all think I can do, if anything, to help this little grafted pear tree become a strong mature tree.
To understand what you are seeing, I did 2 grafts on this little callery pear, but did them about 3 feet up on the trunk. One I grafted to the main trunk. Well, the graft and even the top of the rootstock tree died. But I had also grafted onto that very odd shaped limb- the one that goes straight out and then straight up. So please understand I never intended that limb to become a tree. The new tree was supposed to be grown from the top graft on up- ie the main trunk. I never would have put a graft on that 90 degree limb if I thought it would become the main tree- it was just going to be a grafted limb. But now that the main trunk top died, I would really like to turn the strange limb with the 2 year old graft into a full tree.
But its hard for me to imagine how it could ever be a strong, “normal” mature tree. Any chance that 90 degree angle will straighten out.?
Pay no attention to the huge callery pear 2 feet away. I will be cutting it down any day now- just wanted to be sure the rootstock had a good start first.
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The close crotch of the two new branches are to close and at a bad angle. While that could be corrected with limb spreaders. That 90 degree waterspout graft is unsustainable, if the tree above it is still alive then you should graft to it from the new growth.
I was afraid you’d say that, because its exacrtly what I thought. I can’t imagine any way this cold ever become a strong, healthy tree. Sadly, the main trunk is completely dead from that strange shaped limb on up. Again, the only reason I even grafted that water sprout is that I had also grafted the main trunk top and had left over material. I never would have expected this to have to become a tree. Oh well…
Oh, you can try to T-Bud the lower trunk once the weather is warmer.
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If this were my tree , and I was really worried about saving it.
I would cut it off , right where your branch takes a right turn.
Graft onto the cut heading straight up.
Shorten the existing graft.
To help force the new graft ,that will become the central leader .
Or just start over . .?
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Thanks to you both. The good news is I have all kinds of wild callery pears this size around my property so its really no big loss. And I have excellent luck grafting pear trees. So its no big deal to start over. My real mistake was not harvesting scionwood this winder from the strange shaped limb, because that is the only remaining wood I have from that variety. (our friend @Auburn sent it to me a few years ago). So I do hope this thing will live one more year. Then I’ll take wood from the odd-shaped limb and graft it to another callery rootstock- lower and on the main trunk.
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Perhaps you could chip bud it over the summer?
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Its a great idea. I’ve done lots of grafts but no chip budding…might as well give it a shot since we all seem to agree this guy is doomed!
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a few reply’s up. I posted a few video’s. I learned to chip bud from those vid’s
Hope you find them helpfull to.
Thank-you oscar. I actually already watched those videos (after you posted) and I must admit that they sort of inspired me to try chip budding. I have tried but I am sure I did it too late in the year last time, so I’ll give it a shot. Thanks.
if you chip bud “to late” they can still heal. And can leaf out next year. So there is a chance the chip buds you grafted last year, wil grow this year.
Scratching the chip with the tip of your knife, will reveal the cambium. If it is green, the chip graft took. And you can prune your stock just above the chip. To force it to sprout.
With summer chip budding, you can leave on the leaf stalk. And if it falls off in a week or 2. The graft took. (the hormones from the stock, make the chip eject the leaf stalk without leaf. So if the chip got those hormones it must have healed the graft)
For the leave stalk trick to work, you ofcourse have to wrap the chip bud around the leaf stalk.
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