Brand new cherry tree - what now?!

[LewaK]

Hi all

Haven't been here in ages, sorry to drop in then randomly ask questions but I thought you lot would know better than most.

I picked up a 'Stella' cherry tree from ALDI a few weeks back, and it sat in it's root bag for a few weeks while the weather got nicer and I had time to plant it. It's currently about five foot high (slightly taller), with a few green buds.

So, here's my questions:

- How do I prune it? It's got a fair few spindly branches and I saw something about 'narrow crotches' and 'leader' branches being chosen, but I don't really know what that means. Ideally I'd like it trained as a fan against a wall, as it's currently about two/three foot away from the next door neighbour's house - again, no clue how to prune it to do that.

- I read something about pruning roots back and spreading them. I didn't cut the roots, figuring it would need them for establishing, and just put the uncompressed root ball into the soil, tamping it down until I'd covered the root ball properly. Will this matter? I don't want to disturb it further by redigging it up, is my thought.

- What's the best mulching material? I've got a load of not-quite-broken-down stuff on my compost pile. Would that do?

- Will this variety fruit in it's first year, or do any blossoms need removing to increase fruiting next year (like strawberries)?

Thanks a lot for any help, if I can get some I'll take some photos.

[Capsid]

Don't prune it, I made this mistake and killed the tree; it didn't help that i didn't water it enough either. Let it establish itself in the first year and water it a lot, every day.

A mulch will help keep the root ball moist, so will watering it every day.

Not sure about fruiting, I doubt it but watering it every day will help.

One last thing water it. Did I mention that?

[LewaK]

You did mention that, yes! I will hold fire on pruning it then, and give it another good soak tonight (that's going to be fun mid-summer during a hosepipe ban!)

[Capsid]

Have you heard of buckets? A bucketful a day should do it. The bucket should have water in it.

[FB.]

Don't prune it, I made this mistake and killed the tree; it didn't help that i didn't water it enough either. Let it establish itself in the first year and water it a lot, every day.

A mulch will help keep the root ball moist, so will watering it every day.

Not sure about fruiting, I doubt it but watering it every day will help.

One last thing water it. Did I mention that?

Cherries tend to do best in mild, dry climates, such as the SouthEast.
They have immense root systems designed to cope with poor, dry soil (unless on dwarf rootstock) and therefore cherries normally have no problem finding water and nutrients. The rainfall here is very low; so low that plums and pears are difficult to keep alive, but cherries do very well and can reach a great size. I'm always pulling up cherry seedlings from pips dropped by birds and there isn't even a cherry tree within 100yds of my house!

In cooler, damper areas cherries are more likely to suffer from diseases. Pruning cuts of stone fruits are easily infected by canker or silverleaf. For that reason, pruning is recommended only when the tree is active, so that its defences have a chance to fight off any infections. Pruning just as buds are opening to invigorate (i.e. now), or pruning in summer to reduce vigour of trees which are growing too strongly.

When watering any fruit tree, I would suggest avoid splashing the lower trunk as it can cause crown or root rots. Water at the edge of the root spread, which will also encourage roots to grow outwards. Tap water is better than "stagnant" water from butts if splashing is unavoidable, since water butts are an ideal environment for the kind of root-rotting fungi which like wet conditions.

Many cherry trees tend to have sparse branching because it is part of their design to become a big tree without crowding of branches. With dwarfs, it would be a good idea to guide them in the early years with some pruning to increase branching.

Having not seen the actual branching of the tree I'd simply suggest cut back last year's growth by about half (or cut back to where you'd like 2-4 side branches to form), and do it about now, while the buds are swelling and before they're fully open.

[FB.]

You did mention that, yes! I will hold fire on pruning it then, and give it another good soak tonight (that's going to be fun mid-summer during a hosepipe ban!)

Trees which are not dormant and sat in standing water, will suffer from oxygen starvation of the roots, which predisposes those roots to attack from phytophthora crown rot. The same applies on heavy/saturated soils.
I strongly recommend not putting any fruit tree in water for more than a few hours.

In fact, nowadays, I have adopted an interesting way of planting bare-root trees:

When a tree is bare-rooted, some roots will be damaged. This is more easily invaded by fungi in the soil.
Fungi in the soil are activated by moisture.

So......

I plant a bare root dormant tree. I use my knuckles or boot to firm the soil around it.

I do not water it immediately, to avoid causing germination of fungal spores.

After several days, any wounded roots will have mostly healed themselves, so I then water the plant.

In the case of a plant which is coming out of dormancy and needs water immediately, if the soil is dryish (unlikely at this time of year) I lightly water the pile of earth from the planting hole and mix it to make sure that it is damp but still slightly crumbly (a wet paste will be a death sentence; suffocating the roots and encouraging fungi to germinate and attack the roots - especially any damaged roots). I then use the damp crumbly soil - firmed-in - around the roots.

However, each grower has their own preferences. Too many cooks (or too many growers) can spoil the outcome.

[Capsid]

I recommended watering (didn't I?) because I had a bare rooted cherry tree which I pruned for fan training and then in a hot spell it dried out and died. This weekend is going to be a warm one. I think LeWak has a root ball and not bare rooted so perhaps there is less concern with drying out.

[FB.]

Capsid

I can't help wondering whether your cherry was sick and the hot weather simply finished it off.
Do you know which rootstock and variety you had?

Round here - where most fruit trees struggle to survive in the hot, dry, shallow, infertile, alkaline soil - cherries are very easy to grow and require no care at all to reach an impressive size.
30ft in 20 years without any feeding/watering is easy for a cherry here. Most apples or pears barely manage half that in their entire lifetime.

Round here, for cherries, it's literally:
Dig hole.
Chuck tree in hole.
Kick dirt back in hole.
Tread dirt down.
Come back in a few years and harvest the fruit (if the birds haven't stolen it).

Like I said: cherry seedlings seem to spring up all over the place, with little regard for how poor/shallow the soil - or even cracks in the pavement - nor do they seem to struggle to compete when a seedling germinates in the poor/dry/depleted soil directly in the root spread underneath a large bush.

[hamamelis]

Just wondering if amongst the cherry advice, anyone has any advice for my cherry tree- I just bought a morello, on colt rootstock, from a well-known garden centre chain. It was potted up, but when I took it out, it seemed to hardly have any roots; they'd all been cut through. Looking at it properly in the sun today (I only bought it last week) it looks like a lot of the branches are dead at the tip, and in some cases dead half the way down.
Does it sound likely to recover?

I'm not sure if I should take it back and complain- I only bought it last week, and planted it out on tuesday, I've surely not done anything that could knock it back that fast, right?
I didn't notice the dead bits when I bought it as it's dormant, and they're not obvious unless you look close.

I bought a Lidl one last year, which did precisely nowt before dying, despite me lavishing care and attention on it (hot water bottles, teddy bear, bedtime stories..) I thought this one would be better.

[FB.]

hamamelis

Can you take a picture of the trunk, from ground level to just above the graft?
Does the bark look sunken or discoloured in that area between the ground and the graft?

Can you also take a picture of the dead shoot tips?

To be honest, it sounds as if there's a problem with the tree.

Cherry Colt rootstock is considered to be roughly similar in vigour to apple MM111.
A well-respected nusery's size guide is here > link <


Here's a baby MM111, which I prepared earlier (about 5ft above-ground height, one-year-old maiden):

[hamamelis]

I'll try and go down there tomorrow and take a few pictures. I seem to recall the rootstock above ground and the graft looked OK, but I'll take another look. I'm pretty clueless, so might have missed smething real obvious.

The roots looked like they had been healthy, and suprisingly thick, before they'd been chopped through.
Thanks

[LewaK]

The photos above are taken from my rubbish phone so if you can't see any detail, let me know.

Presumably if it's going to be fan trained I want to take off the couple of branches at the back?

[Capsid]

FB,

I'm fairly convinced that my tree dried out during a very hot spell when I couldn't water it for several days. The buds had begun to burst and all looked fine. The next time I looked at it the leaves of the buds had shrivelled and there was no way back. I've planted another cherry tree in its place and that one has come through OK with lots of green buds just about to open now.

[FB.]

Capsid

For what it's worth, many people think that they killed a tree, when, in fact, my studies show that a lot of trees (or plants in general) bring a disease with them from the old nursery soil.
The trees many not be "infected" as such - so the DEFRA inspectors don't notice anything wrong and don't order the batch destroyed - but the plants may be carrying a disease, which develops after planting (especially without sprays to suppress the disease) - like HIV/AIDS often takes a few years before it shows itself in humans.

Also, speaking to various people who say that they "don't have green fingers" but often it's actually it's the soil and growing conditions which aren't right and even a good gardener may have a serious challenge to get certain things to grow.

[Two_Sheds]

cherry seedlings seem to spring up all over the place, with little regard for how poor/shallow the soil - or even cracks in the pavement

You're so right: our old railway cutting (now a cycle lane) is abundant with cherry plums, farzends of em (or was, until the council strimmed them all off last year in an effort to stop fly-tipping)

The council prefers bare soil, it's easier to manage *rolls eyes