North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 11:52 AM
Subject: Sweet Cherry Rootstocks: Zaiger & Gisella-6
To: nafex-request@lists.ibiblio.org


I've never heard of Zaiger rootstocks of any kind- I think they're in the
business of breeding fruit trees, not root stocks, but maybe they're
branching (rooting) out.

G6 is not a dwarfing, but more a semi-standard root sock, supposedly
reaching about 65% vigor of Mazzard.  Lapins can be a small cherry on this
stock if allowed to fruit early and in fact can runt out from over
production.  Lapins is an over-productive cherry so you have to hand thin it
when it comes into production.   Ranier is more vigorous than Lapins (and
produces clusters of much fewer and larger cherries), if that is in fact
what you have- Zaiger has produced some variations of Ranier to get higher
quality so I'm suspicious the tree might be one of these.

Why on earth would you consider leaving a cherry unpruned?- they're terribly
rank growers when left to their own whim.  Click the following and you may
get some idea of what I'm talking about.


http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/pdf/pnw/pnw543.pdf