Glad to hear you had good luck, Tony. Scott

2018 shaping to be a crazy good year for plums. I get them so rarely due to the customary fluctuating Spring temperatures that I have mature plum trees just covered with fruit this year that have never fruited before. It'll be good to try them at long last. The weather in March and April was perfect with cold day after cold day delaying bud progression until the constant warm weather arrived late April. I've done my copper sprays already and will wait to do my curculio and fungal sprays together with the apples once they finish blooming. My Japanese are Shiro, Methley, Bruce, Primavera, Improved Duarte, Satsuma, Santa Rosa, Howard's Miracle and a few other smaller ones. My fruiting European are Empress, Coe's Golden Drop, Autumn Sweet, Pearl, something a nursery labeled as Burbank (a Japanese plum) but clearly isn't and others. Apricots and pluots looking good too.

Stevos - I'd try to id what happened to the cherry before planting a Victoria. One possibility is honey fungus. Others are bacterial canker or silver leaf disease. Check out the symptoms on the RHS website and see what you think. I don't think the winter would be the problem if it flowered and leafed out ok. There may be something going on at root level such as dryness, encircling roots or some sort of contamination. I have seen a cherry die suddenly where a gas pipe leaked.

You can report it to GW...they will get rid of it. I'm afraid with all the moisture we been getting the hardening off this fall goes out the window and we will see ALLOT of die back come spring. I don't think this cherry prairie growing thing is a sure thing. It's a hit and miss thing...I guess that goes with farming. Man..some really put allot of investment into this...from game fencing to harvester etc. I don't think it was a good season here in the prairies this year. My Evans did poor, the one's I grafted to pin cherries produced more then double. Western Sand cherries put on a nice little crop on a couple of 3 year old plants. Cherry plums didn't set fruit, the regular plums like Brook Gold/Red, Patterson's Pride, Sprout Sunshine, Supreme & Pembina put on a little, oh..the Ptiisin did good. Some European, Green Gage, Mirabelle von Nancy, and some Prune plums have surprisingly set a little fruit with low temp at around minus 43 C. last winter.