plum tree cancer

HELP!! PLUM TREE CANCRE - WHAT TO DO!!!

we have about 15 Italian plum trees where I just moved into all FILLED with blighty cancres, huge bulbs of black hard globs all over the trees.
It has been recommended to slash and burn it all. It's green wood(OF COURSE) and will create so much smoke and will require LOTS of dry wood to burn here in our WET Pacific Northwest.

Do you know of a Permie way to deal with this horrible decimation of the trees and NOT spread the disease?

Any help is much appreciated. I was thinking about a deep hole and bury them but would that deal with the cancre?

~ Jamie from Kendall, WA

I'm not sure if fungal pathogens will propagate in a hugel bed. I'm sure someone can help you out.

My plums are only a few years old but there is a copper based fungicide that might help you out. However the damage sounds fairly extensive. You might want to coppice or outright swap out for something else. Even if you do not cut the tree the old wood will force fruit into the periphery where the wood is newer which is not natural for plums. This is why I aggressively trim my plums. Then again most of stuff acclimatized here is used to deer and moose feedings so I am not doing anything different than what a moose would do.

For the record my plums put on 18-24" of new growth last year depending on the tree because of the hard prune. They look great.

You would be surprised how much a new plant can grow in three years time. In my experience plums and apricots take drier conditions than other fruits. Given the wet climate it may time to consider something more disease resistant.

Whoa Hoss,
You sure you have to take down the entire tree - can't prune out the disease? For an extreme infestation I can see your point.
Perhaps wait a season and see what the tree produces, you might be surprised. No tree is perfect.
Sounds like Black Know Disease?
You can bury the limbs without spreading the disease.
You can burn green wood as well, it doesnt take too much dry wood once its going. Use a propane weed burner followed by a leaf blower.

Thank you Both,
More than one person has said the damage is so extensive the tree MUST come out. It is some kind of cancre, forget the name but it is SUPER infesting and all have said to burn it. I am trying to locate another way of doing this rather than burning wet wood.

I am looking for permie ideas...... any more? ~ Jamie

trees, not tree, there are about 12 of them... ;(

First, can we get some pictures?

Is this a monocrop?

Jamie, what you're describing is "plum knot" and it is endemic where I am. It's local host here is prunus pensylvanica (fire or pin cherry) which I cut down when I see them.

Plum knot is a fungus in/on the bark. It starts small and eventually girdles the branch, killing it. The best thing to do is to remove the branch since it does not go into the heartwood to spread around the tree itself. This fungus isn't black in the spring when it produces spores about the time of flowering. Get rid of the branches before that. Actually all I do is to drag them off into the woods, no burning, no burying.

Learning to recognize it is the best way of keeping it under control. Almost all prunus species can be affected by it to some degree.

i would coppice them if they are still dormant. then let them grow back and maybe re-graft them next year. or not if they are old seedlings like some prune orchards around my parts are.

The permaculture approach would be, I think, to undo the monocrop. But that's assuming there is a monocrop.

So if there are 15 trees in a 5x3 grid, I would probably take out 12 trees.