Can my 2 year old black plum tree be saved? My hubby got "trim-happy" and accidentally nipped the base of our young plum tree that stripped-off a 1.5 inch wide and 4 inch long section of bark near the base of the tree. Overnight it was very windy and we think the high winds contributed to stripping the bark off almost all the rest of the way around the tree. The trunk is about 1.5 inches wide. I've pampered it since we planted it over a year ago, and it produced an amazing little crop of plums a few weeks ago, but am very concerned that we may lose it now from the damage. I'm attaching a couple photos. Is my baby plum tree save-able? And if so, what do you recommend?
By the way, we did not plant too deep, and there is root flair that just can't be seen from the weeds and grass that have grown up around it this past spring. It happened so suddenly, and we're cleaning it up and will add a wide ring of fresh mulch.
We live in Dallas, but this is on a property we own in Eustace (an hour SE of Dallas). We're down there twice a week. We deep water the tree once a week depending on how often it rains, and twice a week during the high heat with little or no rain.
By the way, we also have another plum and 2 peach trees, all doing well (but this black plum is my favorite!). All 4 trees are in a row and 15 ft apart from one another. Each tree has a trench to aid in the deep watering, but just not visible in the photos.
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File comment: Back of tree with next day high wind bark stripping damage. PlumTreeDamage-Back.jpg [ 78.65 KiB | Viewed 10456 times ] |
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File comment: Front of tree with initial stripped bark. PlumTreeDamage-Front.jpg [ 79.3 KiB | Viewed 10456 times ] |