Plum tree advice. Damaged root system

[Tibor nagy]

I put in a landscape wall a few years ago. And had to cut a few roots out of the way. A few weeks later the tree lost most of it's leaves. Over the last two years the tree has come around and looks pretty good. Although two main branches look dead. I do the scrap method on the bark and no green looks very dry and brown. I do see a few small shouts sprouting of the lower portion of the large portion of the branches. I keep hoping that maybe the branch will come around, because the tree will look very mishaped. Any thoughts on the branch recovering or just cut it off. It's pretty bare and dry. Other then a few small shoots near the bottom of the branch.. thanks!!

 

[Raintree]

Without seeing any pics, I would guess you have open the door by damaging the roots to Verticillium wilt.

 

[Tibor nagy]

Without seeing any pics, I would guess you have open the door by damaging the roots to Verticillium wilt.

I'll.take a picture tommorow.. but basically 3/4 of the tree is good. 1/4 of it seems to be dead or barely holding on. I'm wondering if I'm better cutting off what itsnt thriving. To help rest of the tree

 

[Tibor nagy]

As you can see the right side of the tree towards the back. Seems dead, some small sprout here and there but not much and scraping doesn't show much green if any

 

[Brushwacker]

I had a plum tree by a small building. The top grew mostly over the building and the heat from the metal roof killed most the top. Had a nice sprout coming of it near the ground so i cut the older trunk off and left the sprout grow back. Think it was about 3 years after i found a nice yellow peach in the grass and was scratching my head how it got there, then noticed more in the tree. I had about 4 more years of peaches. It got so heavy with peaches 1 year, most the branches broke off and i cut it down about a year later because it wasn't healing well

 

[Raintree]

Prune out the dead, making good trunk collar cuts. A healthy viable tree will fill in the crown voids over time.

 

[Atean]

Seeing this is an ornamental tree, you might prune whole crown back evenly and greatly after what you can weed out the proven dead limb. Plum is a 10 or 20 year tree, so, I'd half it's overall foliage.