98% winter kill on Romeo cherry

[don1357]

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.

[steveb4]

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.

[don1357]

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.

[steveb4]

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!

[don1357]

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.

[steveb4]

great job Don! seeing the cost of those bushes + shipping, its well worth it to get as many free bees you can.

[disc4tw]

You can always use the extras as trade material!

[northwoodswis4]

@don1357

from.

That bush may not have pushed those suckers because of losing the top. It may have done that regardless. Don’t everybody go chopping off their healthy bushes just to get suckers! I also have a sea of suckers around my Carmine Jewels. There may be some other varieties mixed in, as they can send lateral roots long distances. Some of the suckers are already producing cherries.

[don1357]

@northwoodswis4

That bush may not have pushed those suckers because of losing the top. It may have done that regardless. Don’t everybody go chopping off their healthy bushes just to get suckers! I also have a sea of suckers around my Carmine Jewels. There may be some other varieties mixed in, as they can send lateral roots long distances. Some of the suckers are already producing cherries.

I have seen romance bushes suckering, they don’t try to push suckers every inch or so. I really think it went into overdrive because of the imbalance of having no top.

And you wouldn’t need to chop the entire bush either They grow to darn slow as it is. In the early spring before the bush wakes up dig carefully around the trunk, find a fat root going away, and cut it. A month later dig it up; it will be primed for pushing up growth and may even have a few saplings going already.

[steveb4]

theres 4 coming up under my 1 juliet and 3 around romeo. 1st suckers in 4 yrs. and i dont have much room left to plant them.

[don1357]

Of the seven root cuttings I potted during the first go at it all seven are pushing green. Now, those eggs can’t be considered hatched until next spring but it is certainly promising. In addition there are four more root cuttings from a week ago plus seven from this last batch. Oh, and the green ones I potted plus the cuttings I tossed on the aeroponics box… Did I mention I also don’t have much space to plant them in?

It seems that whatever hormone that promotes suckers goes into overdrive if the root doesn’t have a foliaged top. I’ll experiment next year with my Juliet by chopping a fat root close to the trunk and digging it up a month later. My theory is that it will prime the root for sending shoots and that it should make it rather trivial to get sections of it to take

[steveb4]

yeah. mine are only 4 yrs old and are at 8ft and still growing up and out! 2 ft taller than my monty thats the same age. were 6ft this spring. glad i stopped fertilizing last year as this years growth was phenominal. im afraid if we get some wind i may lose the tree as all mine are on a single trunk and top heavy. the monty is the only one growing like a bush and should be the only one that is a tree. ate a bunch of monty today as theyve ripened at least a week before the others. they were very good. 1/3rd.bigger than the others also.

[don1357]

Update: 13 potted saplings overwintered just fine outside and are pushing green. I just marked six more saplings on the ground, which also means that I should be able to pot and sprout the roots in between them.

I must say as far as consolation prizes go having 100% dieback on that Romeo was not the worst thing that could happen. The Romeo itself is showing a smidge of growth on one side. It is still too early to tell if it came through the winter unscathed. The Juliet next to it is working overtime, greening up 100% and pushing growth with gusto.

[steveb4]

out of romeo, juliet and c.j. romeo puts out the most shoots even without any damage. i have 4 sprouts that came up last summer under my romeo. only 1 on c.j. and 1 juliet even though i have 2 of them and juliets are 2 ft. taller than romeo that i got as a xl seedling…

[nkurz]

I also had a 4-year-old Romeo that didn’t bud out this Spring after losing its leaves very early the previous year. It was a typical winter for the area (-15F low) but did have some early below 0F periods before there was any snow cover. Juliet, same age and planted 10 feet away, seems unaffected:

Carmine Jewel (15 feet away from Romeo) is definitely alive, but showing lots of dead areas at the tips. For reference, cages are about 5 ft:

Wowza, a slightly younger plant and about 30’ away, seems unaffected (not pictured). Slightly farther, Montmorency, Evans, and Lutowka rose also don’t seem to be affected. None have born me any fruit yet.

I’d like to figure out what happened here. There was a problem last year where Romeo, CJ, and Wowza lost all their leaves very early (end of July?). I don’t recall any spotting, and think they just turned yellow and dropped off in the course of a week or so.

It’s possible that this was due to a spraying error. I reused a sprayer that I previously used for Safari/Dinotefuran (used to protect ash trees from Emerald Ash Borer) to spray with Spinosad. I consciously didn’t clean it out fully, but it wasn’t a heavy application. The timing doesn’t match up that well, though, and I can’t remember exactly what I did.

I’m hoping I’ll get regrowth from Romeo’s roots like @don1357 did, but I’m also worried that there is some endemic disease that is going to continue killing the others. “Cherry Leaf Spot” has been mentioned here as one to look out for. “X-Disease/Cherry Buckskin” was discussed in an earlier thread.

Our garden area is surrounded by wild pin cherries, chokecherries, and black cherries, any or all of which might be carrying diseases. I’m not able to find it now, but I do recall some earlier post (probably on Houzz) where someone else in Vermont gave up on the Romance Series due to unexplained disease issues.

I’d love to hear others thoughts and experiences. My guess is that I’ll cut Romeo back to just above ground level, and leave it for the rest of the year in case it tries to come back to life. And probably trim the dead tips off of Carmine Jewel. And then hope for the best. Also would be great to hear success stories from anyone who is having good luck with the Romance Series in Vermont or adjoining states that have lots of native cherry species around.

[don1357]

Another orchard person told me some of his Romeos did the same thing more than once before knocking it off and finally growing into big stabilised bushes. This could be annoyingly normal and par for the course for them.

It is greening up sloooowly (The Juliet next to it is about to break into flowering already). It looks like there was some winter kill, I’ll report back when I have a full picture of how much.

[steveb4]

my romeo, juliet, cj, monty, lutowka rose and nankings all came thru 3 -40f unscathed this winter. all 3 of those days broke records for those dates so i think theyre definitely as hardy as the university of SK says they are. so far no disease here. monty had a little cherry leaf spot last summer so ive started a spray regimen for them. so far romeo is the slower grower of the romance series and is the only one that suckers . all have a heavy bloom this year. with them all planted near each other the fruit set should be very good this summer. other than mulch they havent been fertlized in 2 years but look great. gave them all a light pruning in april and it in seems to really have kicked them into high gear. looking forward to many cherries!.

[don1357]

I’m pretty certain this is not a hardiness issue. Sometimes they seem to just do that and based on a very small sample rate the Romeo seems to be more prone to it.

OK; the Juliet is actually opening blooms and is going from half a cup of cherries last year to making up for lost time. It is about 5 feet tall and covered in flowers.

The Romeo lost about 60% of above ground foliage. It doesn’t seem to be cold damage. After it lost the top last year many branches and trunks came up and the ones that are greening up this year are smaller than some of the ones that did not; you would think the smaller and more tender stuff would be more susceptible to cold injuries. The plan moving forward is to eliminate a bunch of the branches so we can get a bit more of a center leader or two going again, so that surviving 40% is going down to 20%.

The Carmine Jewel who lost a good amount of foliage last year is back 100%. It is much slower waking up than the Juliet.

[steveb4]

my Juliet’s are near full bloom now and about half of Cj and Romeo are bloomed. Monty has some opening. Nanking’s and apricot is just finishing and my 4 ft. Lutowka rose looks to be putting out buds. its a much later cherry than the romance series. last year was the 1st time my romance series were covered with blooms but only about 30% set fruit so dont anticipate all will set this year but you will get much more than a handful. i ate all mine fresh last summer and buried the pits in the mulch all over the yard. good luck!

[northwoodswis4]

My Romeos did something similar a couple years back. The dead sections stayed dead, but the bushes survived. Since them I’ve sprayed with fungicide, so have not had a repeat of that.