Plum Pockets

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Plum pockets are also referred to as puffy plums or marsupial disease. This disease is especially widespread in the northwestern regions. As a rule, the first symptoms of this scourge can be detected as early as a couple of weeks after the flowering of plum trees. And with its massive development, yield losses often reach sixty percent. Often, outbreaks of marsupial disease are facilitated by moderate temperatures in combination with high air humidity observed during plum flowering. In addition to plums, cherry plums can also suffer from this ailment

A few words about the disease

When affected by this ailment, the fleshy part of the plum fruits grows noticeably, and the fruits themselves, as a result, take on a bag-like shape. Infected plum fruits gradually stretch up to six centimeters in length and practically do not form seeds. However, with earlier development, which is usually observed in the steppe zone, bones in fruits can sometimes form, but this is where it all ends - instead of developing further, they dry out along with the pulp of diseased fruits. Plums attacked by a harmful disease become very tasteless and practically inedible.

In the very initial stage of the disease, the fruits of plums first remain green, and after some time they turn brown or turn yellow. Often on them you can notice a wax coating of whitish shades, consisting of an impressive layer of a pathogenic fungus, more precisely, from its generative organs, called bags. Infected hearths are characterized by massive shedding.

As for the leaves and young shoots, they become swollen and curved when affected by marsupial disease. And infected flowers are characterized by abnormal development of ovaries.

The causative agent of this plum ailment is a pathogenic voice-mucous fungus called Taphina pruni, the spores of which overwinter in the scales of the buds or in the irregularities of the tree bark. It affects only the fruits, developing during the growing season in just one generation. Fruits are not re-infected with a harmful disease again.

Most often, marsupial disease is affected by late varieties of plums, characterized by a rather long flowering period.

How to fight

In early spring, before the tiny plum buds bloom, it is recommended to spray fruit trees with a 3% Bordeaux liquid (to prepare such a solution, 300 g of Bordeaux liquid are diluted in ten liters of water). It is allowed to carry out similar treatments at the stage of kidney swelling. And immediately after the plum trees have faded, they are sprayed with one percent Bordeaux liquid or fungicides. At the same time, it is important to know that plums are extremely sensitive to copper, therefore, it is definitely not worth overdoing it with the concentration of copper-containing preparations.

The preparation "Horus" has proven itself well, the treatments with which are carried out immediately before flowering, and then immediately after it. Only 2 grams of this agent is dissolved in ten liters of water, spending from two to four liters for each tree. This drug is an excellent protective agent. Moreover, its effect will be more pronounced at an air temperature in the range from three to ten degrees, and if the thermometer rises above 22 degrees, the effect will be less pronounced.

A drug called "Skor" is also quite effective, so in the absence of the above means it is quite permissible to carry out treatments with its help. Also Nitrafen, Tsineb, Polykarbatsin, Kaptan, Polykhom or Kuprozan are suitable.

Infected fruits must be promptly harvested and immediately destroyed. It is important to have time to do this before the characteristic bloom begins to form on the plums. Chronically diseased shoots and twigs are also cut out and subsequently burned. By the way, in the first half of summer it is easiest to notice them, therefore it is recommended to carry out such events during this period.