“I’ll be real blunt about this: I’m not a fan of the most common semi-dwarf rootstock that’s out there, Citation,” said Don Shor, owner of Redwood Barn Nursery. Don was speaking on the December 14 broadcast of the radio show he co-hosts, The Davis Garden Show.
This made me think: Do I know anyone who likes Citation? Everyone I know who grows multiple kinds of stone fruit trees and has had some on Citation prefers other rootstocks.
(What’s a rootstock? See my post, “Your fruit tree is grafted: Why? And so what?”)
Chuck Ingels
The first time I heard an unenthusiastic view of Citation was in 2017 from Chuck Ingels. During a talk at the University of California Master Gardener Conference, Chuck mentioned that peach trees on Citation didn’t last long.
I registered that comment because I knew that Chuck had a lot of personal experience to draw from. He had grown innumerable fruit trees himself, observed many more, and edited the excellent book, The Home Orchard.
A friend
A friend who grows many stone fruit trees on a small farm near me has also found Citation unsatisfactory.
A few years ago, he purchased ungrafted Nemaguard rootstocks and planted them near his peach and nectarine trees on Citation. Since then he has grafted the Nemaguard rootstocks to the scion (fruit) varieties he wants, with the plan to eventually remove the trees on Citation.
Watching the trees on both rootstocks grow side by side, he says he has seen that the Nemaguard trees are healthier overall and “power through leaf curl.”
Me
I have grown a few trees on Citation in my own yard that I’ve been able to compare to trees on other rootstocks beside them. I had a SpiceZee nectaplum on Citation next to a Snow Queen nectarine on Nemaguard rootstock. The SpiceZee grew more slowly, got worse peach leaf curl damage, and always took longer to grow out of it.
I had a Flavor Grenade pluot on Citation next to a Dapple Dandy pluot and a Flavor King pluot, both on Myrobalan 29C rootstock. Those trees have loads of fruit every year and grow every year. The Flavor Grenade on Citation, on the other hand, had loads of fruit but grew slowly. It wanted to fruit on small branches rather than develop a scaffold that could hold a real crop.
I removed both the SpiceZee nectaplum and Flavor Grenade pluot trees on Citation after a handful of years.
Why Citation?
Why do they sell trees on Citation? The main appeal seems to be its weak growth. Yes, its weak growth is the feature. They call it a “dwarf” or “semi-dwarf” rootstock, which sounds attractive to home growers who don’t have a large yard and want a smaller tree.
But described in another way, we can say it’s a slow and feeble rootstock. I would rather have a faster, stronger rootstock that I have to prune more.
Citation alternatives
Instead of Citation, I prefer Nemaguard for peaches and nectarines. Don Shor prefers Lovell. Nemaguard and Lovell both make trees that grow faster than Citation, but which can easily be kept down in size through pruning.
For plums and pluots, Myrobalan 29C has given me great results on a number of scion varieties. My trees on Myro 29C are tough and vigorous yet, as with the peaches and nectarines, I have no problem keeping them pruned down to the height of my reach.
Rootstocks perform differently in different soil conditions so your results may not be the same, but as you look for a bare-root tree to buy this winter, check the tag for the rootstock. I can’t tell you that Citation will perform worse in your yard than another rootstock, as I and others have experienced, but I can say that I will be avoiding any new trees on Citation.
Postscript
Don Shor made some additional comments about his experiences with Citation and specifically on this post of mine here. He noted that he also finds his trees on Citation to need water more frequently compared to those on other rootstocks. Listen to his comments on the January 4, 2024 show here. The topic of Citation starts at 21 minutes.
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Pretty much all DWN trees are on citation. At least most all plum and plum hybrids. I moved to a new house two years ago. All the trees I bought are on citation. About three years ago there was a bit more choice, I.e nemaguard. Now here isn’t much else on offer. Any suggestions?
This is no good, Dan. I’m seeing the same thing as I look at availability lists of retail nurseries. Part of the problem is that almost all of them get their stock from one wholesale grower, Dave Wilson. I feared something like this would happen with the closing of L.E. Cooke a few years back.
Some thoughts:
1. Buy a tree on Citation, and be prepared to thin more fruit from it than you otherwise would need to (plums, apricots, pluots) and deal with slow recovery from peach leaf curl (peaches and nectarines).
2. Buy rootstock and graft, as Spaugh mentioned. Other sources of rootstock: you can get Nemaguard and Lovell from One Green World, and you can get Nemaguard, Lovell, and Myro 29C from Fruitwood Nursery.
Burnt Ridge Nursery is here. I have a good Nemaguard rootstock growing from them that I’ll be grafting this winter.
3. Search around for trees on other rootstocks. For example, I’ve noticed that Four Winds Growers is offering some of their peaches and nectarines on Nemaguard and Lovell, and some apricots and pluots on Myro 29C.
For number 1, if we spray a fungicide, would that prevent peach leaf curl? Or does it only work sometimes. I’ll need to remember to spray my trees on citation.
I just checked and I have 4 trees on citation still in pots. I plan to transplant in ground when they drop all their leaves. During planting, is there anything I can do to help with this rootstalk? Does it like any type of soil? Does it do better in heavier soils or does it just tolerate it?
Thanks in advance,
Hi Eric,
Spraying fungicides that are available to home gardeners seems to help with peach leaf curl somewhat, from what I’ve seen firsthand and from what I’ve been told and from a trial done in 2012.
See these posts for more on peach leaf curl and spraying for it:
https://gregalder.com/yardposts/dormant-spray-deciduous-fruit-trees/
https://gregalder.com/yardposts/wheres-the-peach-leaf-curl-in-2021/
Citation might do better in heavier soils. The trees I’ve seen on Citation in heavy soils look better than those in my yard and others that have a sandy loam.
I don’t think there’s anything special you can do for your Citation trees at planting time, except I would make sure to paint the lower trunks white to protect from sunburn if there are no low branches. Because Citation trees are a bit slower growing, they are a bit more vulnerable to sunburn.
See this post: https://gregalder.com/yardposts/painting-the-trunks-of-fruit-trees/
Nemaguard is back in stock at https://onegreenworld.com/product/nemaguard-rootstock/
Great timing as I still have dormant scion wood!
Theres an online nursery called “burnt ride nursery” that sells the nemaguard roostock trees mail order. Very nice trees for very cheap. Plant it a few feet from the citation tree and graft it the following winter and chop down the citataion trees.
I didn’t see Nemaguard on the Burnt Ridge Nursery website but I’ll email them to verify they have it. I would be love to try Nemaguard but both Fruitwood and One Green World are currently out of it. I have really bad peach leaf curl on all my nectarine trees on Citation. I’m worried about my few pluot trees on Lovell as I also have root knot nematode but they haven’t seemed to make it to that part of the yard yet. Lovell with a Plum Parfait scion produced a lot of suckers but my other few trees do not.
Has anybody had success making rootstock of Lovell or Nemaguard by layering the suckers?
Burnt Ridge does carry Nemaguard but is currently out.
Burnt RIDGE nursery
I agree 100%: I have removed all my Citation rootstock trees for poor performance (East San Diego, La Mesa, Mt Helix area). The vast majority of my deciduous trees are now on either Nemaguard which I prefer, or Myro29C. I will not buy anything on Citation.
BTW, I also have a fun rootstock experiment going: one Flavor King on Myro and one on Viking rootstock (Four Winds – mail order), both near a Santa Rosa.
I must say after one year, though the Myro is doing fine, the Viking is a striking tree with beautiful shape, & stronger branching. Wish there were more trees on it, though we still have to see how it produces…in any case, I’ve never seen trees on Viking locally.
Thanks for this, Holly. I have not grown anything on Viking. Now I want to try it!
I have wanted to try Flavor King on Viking! My hope is to find a powerhouse rootstock and crank out as many flavor kings as possible!
Myro 29C is a powerhouse! I use it for most of my apricots, plums, and many cherries with Adara interstem. For the cherries, vigor is equivalent to Mazzard.
Ugh. Didn’t want to hear that, since I put a peach in last year.
We have an older (20+ years) peach on the APU campus that is on Lovell. Experience is that it is possibly less tolerant of not staying ahead of pruning to keep watersprouts out, but it is quite vigorous and responded to our first step of cleaning up after it was neglected for a few years by overloading itself with fruit. Our plan is to bring the whole thing back to the 5 main (4” diameter) branches over 3 years and possibly graft on a couple of other varieties for fun.
We also have a vigorous and tasty white nectarine that grew from seed (we assume baseball fan with an assist from a squirrel) that got big enough to start bearing while everyone was off campus for a year.
The consensus of the Facebook group California Stone Fruit growers is also that Citation generally isn’t that great unless you have really heavy and wet soil. I’ve avoided it as much as I can but just yesterday I bought 3 trees on this list from Walter Andersen nursery because that’s all that is offered.
As far as I am aware, these varieties are only offered on Citation by Dave Wilson Nursery, probably others as well:
Dapple Supreme Pluot
Candy Heart Pluerry
Sugar Twist Pluerry
Tropic Gold Apricot (Dave Wilson at least)
Cot-N-Candy Aprium
Summer Delight Aprium
I am planning to buy Nemaguard and Myro 29C from Burnt Ridge and either inarch graft or just make a copy.
Thanks for this report, Jason.
Let’s talk to the good folks at Walter Andersen’s and see if they are requesting Citation or Dave Wilson is pushing it on them. Either way, I’d like to learn the reasons why.
The most important problem that I see is that gardeners who grow only one or two stone-fruit trees in their yard, both on Citation, will never know if the performance of their trees is related to their care or the rootstock. But they’ll probably guess that it’s their care. Then they’ll feel the need to buy fertilizer (to get the tree to grow more) or buy concoctions to spray for peach leaf curl (which haven’t proved very effective in trials anyway). I just want people to be set up for success with new fruit trees as far as possible.
I had reached out to DWN earlier this year looking for a Cot-N-Candy aprium, Flavor Punch pluerry and Dapple Supreme pluot on anything but citation, and it turns out that is the only rootstock sold to nurseries for at least those varieties. Their rationale was backyard growers generally want a semi-dwarf tree. Previous years Cot-N-Candy was put on Myro 29c but “the program went back to Citation”.
I wonder if it’s also possibly just easier or cheaper to do citation.
We could talk to Walter Andersen about it, maybe they can convince them to change. David Ross or George A. might be the ones who order from DWN.
Hi Greg, Interesting as always. I looked over my fruit tree tags to see if maybe the rootstock might explain oddities I’ve had (all my trees are from DWN). How my trees with citation have faired:
1. Flavor Grenade pluot is hands down best producer and vigorous tree
2. Saturn peach has been most erratic in growth and producing fruit.
3. Burgundy plum is super strong tree, but doesn’t produce fruit reliably.
See you around! Robert
Hi Robert,
Good to hear the report. Thanks. Do you by chance have any similar trees not on Citation, such as a pluot or peach on another rootstock, that you can compare?
From what I’ve seen, plums and pluots grow better (to my liking, I mean) on Citation than peaches or nectarines. In shopping for new trees, I would take a plum or pluot on Citation if I had no better option, but I would try hard to avoid a peach or nectarine on Citation.
Your trees remind me that I planted a Flavor Grenade and Burgundy at my mom’s place about 13 years ago, and I think they’re on Citation but I can’t find the tags to be sure. The Flavor Grenade produces like crazy; broke branches again last summer because the fruit wasn’t thinned enough. The Burgundy produces well in some years but hasn’t been as consistent. And neither tree makes many rootstock suckers. (I can’t remember finding any.) Have you noticed this with yours? Citation does not sucker as much as Myro or Nemaguard, in my experience, which is one advantage that some people might appreciate.
Hi Greg,
I looked through my “peach” tags, and I now wonder what I’m going to get with my 1 year old August Pride peach on Nemaguard. It replaced an All-in-One almond on Nemaguard because I couldn’t keep the tree size controlled… it was a run away tree … great if you had a large property like you do.
My Saturn peach on Citation from a growth perspective has been a disappointment from the get-go 5 years ago. It was pardoned from extraction by my wife last year and low-and-behold it rebounded with growth and great fruit set.
See ya, Robert
El Plantio nursery in Escondido CA has a lot of bare root fruit trees with nemaguard root stock. Bought a peach tree there today. Fyi
Thanks, Bob. Very helpful!
Thanks for all the good info. I’ve wondered for years if the citation rootstocks were the issue on so many peach, nectarine, and nectaplum semidwarf trees that I have planted and cared for with my many clients over the years. So much peach leaf curl after a wet winter, its impossible to get them sprayed w/Kopr in between rain events to prevent it, so its been very frustrating. I am very excited to try myro or nemaguard but not sure where to find them in Santa Barbara. I need a wholesale grower to purchase from.
From the videos of Gary Matsuoka from Laguna Hills nursery (very instructive, a must see) the main problem with citation is that its not drought resistant at all and loves/needs very wet soils, so the problems with it might be that people don’t sufficiently water trees. Nemaguard is much more resistant to drought as it’s adapted to sandy soils but seems to perform equally well on heavier soils.
Industry want maximum production, water not being the limiting factor so if they can spend 50% more water and get 10% more production they’ll love it (not real numbers just to understand the mindset)
Per Gary all his citation trees died when he had water restrictions, so if you don’t water them enough they go to dormancy very early, as early as late August it seems.