Can I let my new cherry fruit?

[mrbadexample]

Greetings.

I have a small morello cherry that I have planted this year, and am attempting to fan train across my north-facing fence. It wasn't bought as a fan trained tree, just a relatively cheap one from a garden centre with a shape that looked conducive.



As it's the first year it's been in the ground, can I let it fruit or should I remove them?

Cheers,
MBE

[nickdub]

I'd thin the fruits down to 5 or 6 if it was mine - you may need to use two hands one to support the spur, as its easy to damage cherries when pulling off fruit - either that or use scissors.

[mrbadexample]

Cheers Nick. Obviously I'd like to let it fruit, but I guess I'd rather have a better crop next year.

[fluffybunnyuk]

Dont forget to take ALL the fruit, when it does. Otherwise it'll think it produced too much this year....

[nickdub]

Cheers Nick. Obviously I'd like to let it fruit, but I guess I'd rather have a better crop next year.

You're very welcome - hopefully this year's few will be just a taster for years to come - having a few fruit on there will also let you assess whether you are likely to have a problem with birds or squirrels too.

[Jay-ell]

I would go for removing all the fruit so that the tree puts it's efforts into growing the stems rather than the fruit. I'd want to make sure that the boughs were strong enough in future years to support the vrop and that it had good leader growth.