I'm using Krymsk 1 available from Raintree. Not sure how dwarfing it is as I've only had one mature plum tree. Just budded about 20 to plum. It's very dwarfing for peach/nectarine but not really too compatible. I did have one tree of multi grafted peach/nectarine for about 7 yrs. The fruit was medium to large and high brix. Tree was 6ft with little or no pruning.

Even on standard root plums can be pruned to maintain 8ft. It helps if your site isn't overly vigorous, ie not too much water or fertility.

I have one prune plum grafted to Nanking cherry and it is severely dwarfed; problem is, after 7 years it is still not bearing fruit. This particular variety, however, is slow to come into bearing, so that might not be the Nanking cherry causing that.

I think Lucky said that he played with grafting different stone fruits to tomentosa (Nanking cherry) a bit and found the results to be pretty skimpy on production. For you it may be different and it might be worth a try. It'd be fun to hear your results.

I've been hearing, some have good results in Nanking.

From what I've read, Krymsk 1 is cross between Nanking Cherry and Myrobalan (cherry plum). Krymsk 86 is cross between peach and Myrobalan. I get the impression K-1 has compatibility issues with peaches and nectarines while K-86 is more compatible with peaches, nectarines and apricots. I don't remember there being any noted plum compatibility issues for either of the 2.

I probably should mention that K-86 produces a semi-standard plum tree and K-1 dwarfs to 50-60% of a K-86. Marianna 2624 would fall between these two.

This post was edited by nyRockFarmer on Thu, Aug 7, 14 at 0:49

Thanks everyone

Mark - I remembered you mentioning this but wasnt too sure on the details. I cant find anything yet about grafting to nanking online.

What I have available are wild sandcherries, evans cherry, carmine jewel/juliette USask cherries and a small seedling nanking. I also have seedlings of a small yellow/green plum (which I believe is greengage) and a seedling apricot, but I highly doubt I won the gene race and managed to get dwarfed trees through seed.

The problem I have when ordering anything is availability. Not much in my area and I cant find too many online places that ship which sell rootstock. I have found some, none with any dwarfing prunus.

I have thought about pruning for size, but in my limited experience growing and pruning plums they just seem too vigorous in growth to really be able to keep it in check. My experience is with Toka and the japanese seedling. I severely pruned the toka for shape two years in a row and it grew vigorously that the last 8 inches of growth fried in the winter due to it not hardening off.

Does the entire tree need to be trellised when using Nanking bush cherry for plum rootstock?

Are you able to get hold of Pixy semi-dwarfing rootstock? That gives a plum tree about 10 -12 feet.

My plum-on-tomentosa has never needed support or trellising, and in fact has been exceptionally easy to control- I removed a couple of limbs early on to establish something of a central leader to about 24" in height, and then pulled the leader 45 degrees over to make it a vase. It has shown good growth this year, but I think it's going to bloom next year. Said that last year, too!

The bottom six inches is obviously Nanking cherry- rough barked and gnarly. From there on the bark looks like any plum. The top looks like it wants to over-grow the bottom, but it hasn't

I suspect that a shorter tomentosa stem would result in a less dwarfed tree, but that's just guessing. Right now it seems nicely balanced and I think I got lucky. I'll try to get pictures one of these days.

I think you can manage a plum by pruning pretty well. It helps a lot to make lots of thinning cuts through July, limiting the reserves that the tree can bank for next years growth. Your real payoff in pruning comes the following season. And because young plums are such enthusiastic growers it will give you plenty of chances to fix your mistakes.

I think a full load of fruit would determine if it needs to be supported. Pictures would be nice.

Good point about the fruit load. But I never had to support this tree's grandpa, and it carried a lot of fruit with no problem. But this one does have fairly long and limber-looking branches, so mebbe, mebbe. We'll see. If we ever get a fruit load, that is!

I don't know when I'll get pictures made. I have to re-figure out how to do it.

Good info, mark.
My plum & peach on Nanking were grafted here in KY and planted at my Dad's home, in east-central AL - on the z7-8 interface - not exactly prime territory for Nanking. They hung in there for a number of years; not sure the plums ever fruited, the peach (and old heirloom 'Indian' peach) never surpassed about 4 ft in height.
It's been so long ago now, and the property has changed hands...I can't give much more info.

Floral_uk, I haven't seen Pixy offered here in North America.

I think Krymsk 1 is the path of least resistance here. Just lop the top in 6'- 8' range or secure the top growth in bent over position. Nanking cherry sounds interesting as an additional experiment, but I don't think I would want to put all my eggs in that basket. I would hate to wait 5-8 years and end up declaring it a total failure. Life is too short.

This post was edited by nyRockFarmer on Fri, Aug 8, 14 at 9:29

Well if nanking is that good of a candidate then I do believe I am in luck. Im pretty sure my neighbors have two well established plants. They sucker do they not? How well do they grow from cuttings?

Now I am even more curious because Lucky mentioned peaches on nanking. I am wondering if any hardiness will be passed off to peaches? That plus a good microclimate may give me just enough of an edge to get one to survive here.