I’m extremely curious about this, so I really hope some of you can offer some ideas .I have a black Tartarian Cherry Tree that is 4 years old. It hasn’t ever set any fruit before, even though it has bloomed. I always assumed that was because I had no pollinators old enough to bloom. This year, I still don’t have a sweet cherry of any kind that bloomed (except the Black Tartarian).so there is still no pollinator. But guess what? My BT is absolutely loaded with cherries!!! Of course I’m thrilled, but also completely baffled. How on earth can it have all these cherries? (They are big enough now to be certain they are fertilized fruits and not just tiny ones that will fall off from no pollination).
Obviously the easiest explanation would be that there is another sweet cherry nearby. But I live on almost 10 acres, and I am surrounded by nothing but farmland as far as you can see on almost every side of me…meaning no fruit trees in at least 1/3 a mile or more. What few houses are near me I’ve been to and am familiar with and they have no cherries at all.
The next possibility is my tree is mislabeled, but I don’t think so. I have a Montmorency and a North Star, and they both bloom long after the BT has finished blooming and has dropped petals and has fruit on it. Also, I bought this tree from a good company, not a big box.
So I’m out of guesses. Unless I have the virgin Mary in tree form, I suppose there just has to be another sweet cherry within insect range, but it seems so impossible to me knowing my property and the area around me.
There are some decorative flowering cherries about 1/4 mile from me but I’m 100% sure they are flowering only and they haven’t produced fruit in the last 6 years for certain. Could they still be a pollinator? I also have some wild cherries, (wild black- the really big ones) but I don’t think they bloomed when my BT did, and if so, I don’t think they can be pollinators…or can they?
Again, I’m really curious about this so I’d love to hear if anyone has any clues on how a sweet cherry (purported to be Black Tartarian) can have a full load of fruit without another sweet cherry anywhere. Thanks all.
I didn’t look too carefully at your words, if they are “black cherry” they could be prunus seritona which I don’t think pollinates. Around here all the wild cherries with black fruit are prunus avium which is the same species as sweet cherries so I thought you were meaning that. If its not the black cherry it could also be the ornamental cherries that are pollinating. Just because they don’t set fruit doesn’t mean their pollen is no good - in fact usually the pollen is good on those trees. I have a large weeping cherry which I expect is producing pollen for my cherries.
Interesting, I have a weeping cherry my wife bought for one of the grandkids ( they each get a tree) and I never thought of it as a potential pollinator.
Sometimes pollination rules are very strange. . I had a plum tree, actually prune, that was flowering and setting fruit just one year - it died after that due to poor drainage and bad winter. And my neighbor has a large decorative flowering plum tree for many years. The same year when my plum was in bloom, that “flowering” plum brought several buckets of plums, first time for all it’s life. My neighbor was pretty shocked). And we are in the big town, where every yard has some kind of flowering trees, and many have fruit trees too, so I am sure there are a lot of plums around. But that flowering plum was waiting for “perfect” match.
The news is all good! Here is a photo of the last one that I took a bag off of and ate. As you can see, it still wasn’t the dark, dark red/black color they should get to, but the ones I have left are still darkening up. I have them in the white paper fruit bags I got from Clemson University so I can’t see them unless I unwind and unhook the bags, but I can tell I have some darker than this one now just by peeking in the hole in the bag.
I’ve been thrilled with the success I’ve had with these. The tree had hundreds of blooms and the only reason I didn’t have hundreds of sweet cherries was I didn’t have a pollinator this year because I lost them to spray drift last year. I’ve planted some fairly large pollinators this year so hopefully they will produce enough blooms next year to at least polinate my BT.
But those that did get pollinated just did wonderfully. They grew large, flawless, and healthy. ANd the tree itself is honestly the healthiest, best looking fruit tree in my whole orchard. It’s a picture of good health and grows quickly. It seems to have topped out at about 10 feet, and hasn’t gotten any taller in 2 years. However, it does continue to put on healthy new wood on the tips of lower branches and newly divided smaller branches.
In short, I can only say that this particular year, my dream of Sweet Cherries came true and could have been much better with just 1 more sweet cherry pollinators. I will say that it bloomed very early and we didn’t have a late frost this year, but if we had it could have ruined things. I’ll get a photo of one of the really dark ones when I pick them…any day now.
I think I have 6-7 different sweet cherries now, and it is not even close- BT outperforms ALL OF THEM. And I am now sure it wasn’t just a lucky, 1-tree fluke. I planted 5 sweet cherries last year including my second BT. The BT has vastly outgrown all the others already. It put on lots of nice, healthy new growth, whereas all the others just kind of came back to where they were last fall and are sort of holding their own. You’ve probably already heard me say that my older BT is one is my healthiest, best looking trees, and it is again this year.
Now, to be fair, so far the yield has been very low, but I’ve never had a pollinator more than a few feet tall with more than maybe 10-15 total blooms. This year at least I had several pollinators, even though they are just one year old trees. That means I had quite a few more blooming cherries this year, and it does seem to have resulted in a larger number of pollinated fruit.
All of this is just my typically long winded way of saying my BT did really does seem like a great sweet cherry for our area.
Kevin I think your BT’s need to come out to give my BT a pep talk – its been a complete slug, still a midget 10 years on. The canker has set it back pretty bad. You are probably dry enough to not get as much canker. BT is more susceptible than average in my orchard.
My neighbor has two BT. They have not set fruit for the first 5-6 years. When they started to finally flowered last year, not much to brag about. This year, my neighbor got sick of them and “ trimmed” them quite severely. She might not keep them around much longer.
By the way, she bought hers from Home Depot so. Not sure if they are true to labels.
Strangely, that pretty much describes all my other sweet cherries EXCEPT BT- as I said above. Now they haven’t had 10 years, many are just on year 2 but I have 2 others that are 3-4 years old and had another one die after 2-3 years, and nothing but BT has done anything but sort of hold their own. So to be clear, I’m not singing the praises of sweet cherries in my area, just BT,
. I had a plum tree, actually prune, that was flowering and setting fruit just one year - it died after that due to poor drainage and bad winter. And my neighbor has a large decorative flowering plum tree for many years. The same year when my plum was in bloom, that “flowering” plum brought several buckets of plums, first time for all it’s life. My neighbor was pretty shocked). And we are in the big town, where every yard has some kind of flowering trees, and many have fruit trees too, so I am sure there are a lot of plums around. But that flowering plum was waiting for “perfect” match. 