Middle Tenn. is zone 7a which is hot and humid in the summertime. The average daily high in July is 90* and the average relative humidity is about 75%.
Why is this important?
Cherry trees have several diseases caused by bacteria and fungus that thrive in areas with a lot of moisture. Humid and warm east coast is the condition for these diseases.
Please check these diseases and pests of cherry. You want to arm yourselves with knowledge before starting planting cherry trees.
Sweet cherries tend to have more problems than sour cherries in my opinion.
Wanted to compare your climate to mine and see if cherries can grow here. Seems unlikely we have three months of heat and humidity comparable to your place from July to September.
Thanks for the reply. I researched this last Spring and I tried to find disease resistant varieties. My Danube tart cherry and the Juliet Bush Cherry did fairly well. My Royal Rainer Sweet Cherry did fairly well with moderate spraying.
God bless,
Frank
I grow sweet as well as sour cherries. You will have the problem of brown rot almost for sure if you have rains in the spring. There are fungacides for this. Also, and this is big. On the sweet cherry trees in mid spring the tree may begin to look unhealthy. The leaves at the ends begin wilt and curl up. If u use a magnafying glass you will see aphids sucking the leaves. Ants are everywhere. The nasty ants ‘milk’ the aphida and return them like cattle to underground chambers in the fall. I place nylon sox with safety pins around the trunks about a foot or so off the ground, and then smear Tanglefoot all around the sox. The tree comes back to life within a week or two. The ants will try to make a bridge over the sticky Tanglefoot with a long piece of like Sudan grass, so you have to inspect regularly.
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