This is heartbreaking. My Romeo bush, planted in 2018, finally put out a cup full of cherries last year, so at 5’ tall and very bushy I was looking forward to a good crop this year. Nope, it died to within a few inches of the soil. Growth is starting from the base of the trunk. The Juliet next to it came back with gusto, zero winter damage. A few bushes away is a Carmine Jewel planted in 2019, very nice small tree shape with a central leader, all but a few branches seem dead. I put that at 80%+ dead…
To make it more puzzling last winter was a fairly mild one by our standards. Of the three dozen varieties of random stuff nothing else experienced any winter kill. Everything else seems to be growing vigorously (except a stunted Parkland apple tree but let’s save that discussion for another topic). I fertilize with compost, top off with mulch, I’m not against sprinkling fertilizer here and there but not in excess.
Anything I should look at to try and figure out what’s causing this?
i had the same conditions here last winter and although havent lost a tree, ive had alot of branches on many plants that never leafed out. all we hardy to my zone or even more so. we had less snow than usual but i dont think we ever got below -10f. Galina helped me figure it out. we had exceptional drought -8in defict until late aug then it started to rain and did so for 3 weeks so by the time it stopped the defict was gone. we’re thinking that rain got the plants wanting to grow and caused them not to harden off for winter. my brothers trees all had similar issues. not saying this is the case for you but its a 1st for me. sorry for your loss.
Snow cover was fine and nothing else suffered. By nothing else I mean lots of stuff that is nowhere as hardy as these are supposed to be. The kill was well bellow snow cover and the winter wasn’t even that cold.
Things that have caused dormant season kill/damage here:
lack of snow cover
pocket gophers (damage is below ground)
voles (both below and above ground damage)
extreme temperatures (it seems -25 or lower)
sunscald
Hey Don- I have to wonder if it was winter kill? I say that because those trees are very hardy, but also because I’ve had mine die back to the ground, and I’ve had as much as half of a large bush die also. I’ve had a pretty big section of a Romance bush die a few times. I don’t know what causes it, but in every case- just like yours- it grows back from the ground up. But I’m sure my dead sections weren’t winter kill, even though it often happened in the spring. In several cases, the bush would wake up and start putting out new leaves and then die. Other times it wouldn’t wake up at all, but even then I’d find fairly good looking cambium (not bright green but not brown either) indicating that it died in early spring. Mine haven’t done that the last 2-3 years but when they were from 2 to 5 years old it was common. Just something to think about.
OK, I was thinking you meant it was killed by the cold. I’ve never figured out why mine sometimes die from ground up or why big sections sometimes die, but as I said, mine seemed to grow out it around year 5.
We have had warm, wet autumn weather followed by sudden deep freezes two years in a row. The cherry bushes didn’t harden off and go dormant in time. I lost my Romeo Cherries last year and have seen significant die back from my
other U of S cherries. My apple trees have smaller leaves on the upper branches but no die back.
Here’s what amounts for growth. Keep in mind that this is waaay bellow snow coverage, if it was temperature related winter kill it should have survived about a foot and a half up.
The Carmine Jewel is kinda worse, only two spindly branches decided to leaf out. It used to be a very well formed single trunk bush. The red lines mark the branches that are alive:
I don’t know about your Romeos, but roses need to be heavily mulched to prevent damage when there are temperature swings. Evidently the freeze-thaw cycle is hard on the crown?
The mulch was removed so I could take out weeds, add a layer of compost, then 3~4 inches of green mulch as far as the drip line but not touching the trunk.
I guess it pays to neglect your garden from time to time. I haven’t spent time weeding and today while looking at the upcoming weekend work I spotted five root saplings coming up in a four-foot radius around the original bush. I’m guessing the bush got scared into pushing growth everywhere it could.
The first picture is the original spot coming back up, the other two are two of the root saplings.
and theres the silver lining! i got 2 juliet voulenteers that just came up in the mulch about 4 ft away from the tree. i was going to pot one up and send it to you because i felt bad about your tree bieng set back.
This just got pretty crazy. I dug up just one of the root saplings. It looks like the mother bush, once it lost all of the top growth really got crazy at trying to push growth anywhere it could. Take a look at this picture:
It is upside down. Every single one of those down facing ‘roots’ are new growth trying to break to the surface. The long one on the right side is a whole new root trying to put out a bunch of new growth.
Again; this is a single one of the new root sapling clusters that made it to the surface. I chopped it into sections and potted a total of 10 potential plants, some just root pieces. Even if most don’t make it keep in mind that originally I expected to get only one new plant from this section.
If I knew this was going to happen I probably would have topped the bush myself on purpose.
This may not be the best time of year to be transplanting it. Might be good to just leave part of it growing as is. If they aren’t hardy enough where you are, just start with a few until you see how they do. My Romeos aren’t thriving, either. I think it is from the leaf spot, so have hit them with Immunox, lime-sulphur and probably copper over the past year, which has helped. My Carmine Jewels don’t seem affected. Crimson Passions did very poorly. Juliets and Wowza coming along okay.
