I’ll take some when I get home.
1 Like
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.
I’ve had apricots do the same thing
I’m only calling it winter kill because it happened over the winter. I’m actually puzzled as to what it may have been.
1 Like
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.
1 Like
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.
2 Likes
Did you have yellowing leaves or spots on your leaves last year? It will kill your cherries Sour Cherry Leaf Spot
1 Like
Here are the pics. The bush went to sleep in the fall in what seemed perfect health. It is about 5 feet tall.
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:
And to cheer me up here are pictures of my baby white imperial currant and Northline saskatoon, fully loaded:
6 Likes
that is strange. makes me worry about mine as we’re in similar zones. have you googled to see if its a thing with these cherries?
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?
1 Like
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.
1 Like
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.
I’ll pot the bigger ones this weekend. This setback is going to turn into a huge push forward 
2 Likes
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.
6 Likes
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.
1 Like
These things are supposed to be hardy to zone 2, I’m in 4 and this was a mild winter; whatever it was it was not winter kill. Talking to other orchardist it looks like romeo’s have been known to do that; they will have a massive die off when young once or twice and then they should be fine.
The original plan was to do as you say; let them put some growth before transplanting them out. That was until I dug around and found what was happening; it would have been a bunch of plants within inches of each other and I would have not been able to really separate them, only thin them out.
Heck if only 40% make it to next spring I’m still getting four plants instead of one. Not to mention that I have more saplings coming up I need to inspect.
1 Like
makes me want to chop my 2nd juliet to get more bushes but i got 2 good suckers to pot up now so ill take it and this years cherry crop. i originally had only 1 juliet and it failed to come out of dormany, or so i thought, the 2nd year. Honeyberry USA sent me a replacement. about 4 days before i got the replacement the 1st one sent up a new shoot. it actually outgrew the replacement one even as it was 14in.when i put it in.
Some of these bush cherries can take 4 years for the top to have a grow spur, but they are certainly busy building up roots and that’s where the stored energy to push the top comes from.
Two things you can do:
-
When you pull your root sapling either look for extra lateral roots or cut a bit extra root at the ends with smaller roots attached, pot those. This is from a chunk of root I got with a recent Carmine Jewel I bought
-
Early in the season dig around the crown of your cherry bush, find a fat root, and chop it. The sprouts will come like mushrooms after a spring shower.
3 Likes
good to know when the trees are $20 a piece + $20 shipping for a 6in. twig! just like Ribes and cane fruit. way too overpriced!
Update 7/11/21: I just pulled two more sections of root. Our season is super short so I may be playing it too close to the wire… some of these, depending on the technique and material, may or many not be able to build up enough root to survive the winter.
I pulled this:
And this:
As you can see the bush truly panicked and started pushing growth out by any means possible. This is on top of the ungodly amount of new grow the original trunk is doing. Quite amazing to see what a full root system and no top can do.
Based on past experience non lignified cherry saplings are too tender to mess with; chances of them dying are super high. The sensible thing here is to chop the green growth and plant the roots. As a matter of fact the roots I planted earlier are beginning to push growth out; it is too early to count those chickens but it is certainly promising.
Anyways, I decided to try everything I could think of. Here is the plant material chopped up:
The first bunch ended like this:
And the second like this:
Most of the transplants were roots. These actually have the best chances of survival:
I’m keeping the green transplants inside to ensure less sun/more water:
And finally I chopped up the green cuttings into cannon fodder for my aeroponic box. Sadly I had to evict a few currants that would have loved to live there a bit longer. These are now in coconut coir:
Here are the cherry cuttings surrounded by haskaps and compact bush cranberry.
Honestly even if they root I seriously doubt they will have enough time to build up for the winter, which for us starts around mid September… If I had a green house (next year project) I could probably buy them enough time to push better growth. No biggie, I’m sure quite a few of the root cuttings will stick the landing and that I’ll end up with more than I can plant.
5 Likes
great job Don! seeing the cost of those bushes + shipping, its well worth it to get as many free bees you can.