North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Dianne Stephany" <iluvdanc@rochester.rr.com>]

Reading the information on cherries posted so far -

I did not realize when I bought my cherry trees how different rootstocks could have such diverse reactions to soil conditions (or to anything else!) All I knew about rootstocks were that they were used to create dwarf or semidwarf trees.  We have such heavy clay soil that this year with the drought it was like concrete. We are in zone 5b, Rochester, NY.

 

We have Ranier (gold & sweet) on Gisela doing great.

We also have Van (gold & sweet) on Mazzard doing great. Both trees produced a lot of cherries this year (we missed some due to birds) with only one spraying of Serenade (b. subtilis).  I planted them in April 2000 ; they were 4 ft, 1/2" caliper ; 10 + ft trees now. The Van has a 16 in circumference, the Raniers about 12 in average.

 

Last year when we had more rain we had a bumper crop. We put up 6 gallons! of cherries in addition to the 2+ gal or so that my husband eats while he picks and the 2 gal or more we gave to family and friends.

 

Our Emperor Francis (red, sweet) on Mazzard is dying- it never did take in our yard (4 yrs old and only produced a handfull of cherries this year) and now I suspect it was the clay soil it did not like.

 

We also have a wild cherry (red, tart) nearby that the birds clean all the fruit off. We didn't plant it as a decoy but it works that way. 

 

We have the cherry trees listed above, plus apples (Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Melrose, Fortune and 20 oz), pears (Bosc and Anjou), peaches (coralstar and starfire), plums (Simka and Van) and apricots (Moongold and Sungold). Of all of these the cherries and peaches are the easiest by far for us to grow. Just plant, pick and eat. They got sprayed once this year only because the apples and pears were getting sprayed at the time for fire blight and I didn't want to throw out the leftover serenade.

 

The pears and the Granny Smith apple have been the most trouble- fire blight sensitive. I didn't know about fire blight either when I bought the trees. Our neighbor has a decorative plum with plum curculio beetles and now our plums need to be sprayed. We are also committed to staying organic and will be trying the Neem mentioned before on the list for the beetles.

 

Thanks,

Dianne Stephany

Rochester NY (53 and finally the sun is shining after 5 days of rain, rain and rain).