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 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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.