Mamuang, you will love these! I picked these last summer for one pie. I had enough Montmorency cherries to have three people come over to pick with me! There were hundreds. Once it gets going its great. It took about seven years for mine to really start producing. Maybe Scott had a different experience.
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They look great. That is the kind of blossom amount you are looking for!
Thanks, and better overlap this year, so crossing my fingers. Hoping for a reason to buy bird netting, lol!
Patty S.
Id like to disagree with that statement. Sweet cherries like heat just fine. Cherry rootstocks do not. Hybrid plum/cherry rootstocks solve that problem.
Which hybrid plum-cherry rootstocks do you recommend?
So far I can say pretty solidly that Z-Dwarf can take heat with no issue and its looking like Krysmk 5 can also. Traditional cherry rootstocks like Mazzard, Colt, and Mahaleb can not. They croak for us in August.
The trees take the heat just fine as long as the understock can keep up also.
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Eric this is really good info, what about Gisela rootstocks any experience with them? Gisela is my favorite rootstock here, it works well in my conditions, although my conditions are a lot different than yours.
We just put in a few trees on Gisela. Wont know much until I see how they do thru summer.
Keep us updated. Even though it doesn’t help me, knowing this info I could pass it on as advice to others in the future who are trying to grow cherries in conditions such as yours.
Interesting. Like Andrew says, conditions back East are a little different.
I have Z-Dwarf, Colt, and K5, so we’ll see. Rumor is the Kymsk stocks may be prone to cherry canker.
I wish I had some Gisela 6 or 12 but they are hard to come by. Giselas are supposed to be the best dwarf stocks for cherries for these parts.
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Eric, this is very interesting. I will be waiting to hear your end of summer report. My cherries are on Colt, and done great here, but my summer heat is a fraction of what you get, and for a fraction of the amount of time. Still, I am very interested to see how Krysmk 5 does for you.
Patty S.
Patty I was going to comment on your picture of your MR/RL and say they look like they are on colt. Meaning not quite as happy as they should be. Please dont take that as a insult, not meant that way. There is one person here in town that has squeaked a cherry thru on Colt for many years. Its anemic looking, Not alot of dense branching like we see on our on ZDwarf. Ill have to see if I can put up some pictures. Tradtional cherry rootstocks just arent fond of heat or heavy soil.
We lost a 2 year old large-ish cherry on Z-Dwarf to canker. Our barn cats like to sharpen thier claws on the trunks of young trees and the wounds on this particular tree just took off into canker like mad. In the end the whole trunk was one big ooze fest. Since that incident we wrap all young trees with a black plastic mesh to keep the cats off of them.
We actually sprayed with copper for the first time ever this year due to concerns over canker. We havent had alot of issue with it (just the one cherry and a multi grafted pluot on citation) but having seen how quickly it can take down a tree im not going to take any chances.
Eric, it’s great to hear you have barn cats. What a good program–good for the cats, good for keeping the rodents away. But sorry to hear about that one tree. My cat keeps his claws sharpened on the couch (!) so I don’t have to worry about my trees! 
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When we started farming this property the mice showed up and became a real problem. So we acquired a feral pregnant momma cat that was running around the local Lowes garden section. She was truly wild and gave us a hell of a time getting her in the box to bring her home. And shortly after we got her here she bit me to top it off!! lol The resulting infection as my finger she bit blew up like a baloon was quite the shock!
She settled down into being a very sweet animal tho after she gave birth. And she is HELL on mice and birds. We kept two of her offspring and they are also great. Tho the females really are far superior to the male we kept.
The trees don’t seem to have broken dormancy completely.
Eric and Bleeding, I opened up the canopy last year, so I could get good air flow. Bleeding, no, not fully in bloom, yet, but they both are nearly blooming at the same time. This is a first for me. Much better overlap this year with blooms! Eric, I don’t have heavy soil here. I’m on DG. I try to top dress every few years with GroMulch and regular mulch to add in more organic matter. And, it’s really not that hot where I am. I’m about 7 miles from the coast as the crow flies 
But, even in my area, I bet our cherries would do better on Zdwarf or Krymsk 5, no doubt. And good to know copper can help control canker. I don’t know why I didn’t know that. I have one tree that has shown a very small sign of canker. Only reason it hasn’t really gotten out of control is lack of rain/dew.
Patty S.
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I bought five colt rootstocks and five of the Krymsk rootstocks I’m going to grow them for a year then head them off and let them sucker out. Then bury them with saw dust for six months and then remove the sawdust and harvest the stocks for grafting. Some I will bench graft with scions I received from people on this forum. I’m thinking about buying a self pollinating cherry tree on the zdwarf to see how that goes. I like the idea of having multiple little cherry trees that are easy to net.
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Now that we finally have the sweet corn in and half the peaches thinned I had time to take a few pictures. The first 4 photos are Minnie Royal and Royal Lee on Z-dwarf. This is 4th leaf. Had to thin and take alot of wood off this winter and they are still that large and full. Last photo is our Lapins just finally breaking dormancy. Its going to be a very fine cherry year.
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If you order trees next year now you can get some good varieties on G from ACN, if they take early orders from small buyers. They should as they make double money per individual tree and sell out anyway.