Only fresh manure burns, but that would have to be tilled in the ground. I have put fresh on top in small amounts. The animals are just making compost for us once it’s a couple years old. It’s like black dirt. I thought all trees loved it. I am surprised your pears do not, or are you talking the salt fertilizers. I have a garden above my pool that I tilled in a whole car hauler trailer with. That worked great but the tree roots found it and filled my soil with feeder roots! Those white barrels you see by my romance cherries are full of just shredded manure and leaf mold that I grew potatoes in. The big bushes behind the birdhouse pole are lilocks. They sent their roots up threw my 1" drain holes and started filling my barrels. I moved some and had to rip them from the ground. They had roots almost 3/4" in dia. filled with feeders off those! I also had gypsum and bone meal in those. I grew potatoes in there.
Your JB’s didn’t help you out. I bet next year you’ll see a good bloom if you keep the JB’s off.
Very pretty trained that way! I’m excited to hear how you like them.
Love your tree version, I might have to try one like that too! Is it grafted or just trained? Thanks for the inspiration! 
How are your new ones doing? What about your transplants?
My Juliet has three cherries still on it, a couple of them are already turning red.
Cuttings I took this year all died, not having luck with hardwood. I had a few rooted cuttings of juliet from last summer I kept outside and they died also over the winter. I had some more established CJ cuttings from last year though that survived outside planted in my garden, so I will be trying again this year! Definitely not an easy species to propagate, but Im not an expert either. Im not sure how this ‘tree form’ bush will do long term, I will be painting the trunk white every year to help ward off sunscald or whatever its called…
Thanks Derek. Your Juliet tree looks cool, I would never have imagined someone doing that with a bush.
I don’t know if you were replying to my question or not, but I was also asking @amy if her transplants from MI are doing well in their new home in KY, and if the Juliet’s she got are growing any.
From what I understand if you put the bush cherries on rootstock, they grow like any other tart cherry. Into a tall tree. It appears it’s own roots are dwarfing. Even Carmine Jewel grows very tall. A member here had one that was a 10 foot whip. Some nurseries have been putting them on rootstock. The buyers didn’t know. Probably to propagate them quickly.
well Honeyberry USA had xxl Romeo offered . i pulled the trigger! 5’ tall for $58 w. shipping. its at least 3ft taller than my cj and juliets i put in last spring. hopefully it does well and gives me cherries in a couple years.
You don’t fool around with that caging! Deer must be a real problem there. I have my Juliet behind a 4ft cage, and it’s outgrown it in two years.
What’s in the white barrels, blueberries?
i also received my lutowka cherry from HB and planted 2 days ago. tiny little 6in. twig. smallest I’ve ever got from them. hopefully its as vigorous as the other cherries they sell.
Sometimes its hard to resist getting more plants… Pulled the trigger on these yesterday!
This shipment includes the following items:
Item # Description Qty
ch-romeo-3 Romeo Cherry 2-3’ tall 2
cr-b-crandall-1 Crandall Black Currant 1’ tall 1
cr-b-chernaya-1 Chernaya Lisovenko Black Currant 1’ tall 1
Yes, if I don’t protect them I won’t have them. I use what ever I have on hand. Some of the fencing you see is five foot rebar for slab concrete. It’s nice and sturdy. Then I have a bunch of fencing that my friend gave me. It’s a mix bag of all different sorts. Plus I bought a hundred foot roll of chicken wire for $37. I wouldn’t be surprised if my tall bush gets to nine foot tall this year. I had a few more long top branches on both but it took them trying to root cuttings. I had potatoes growing in the barrels and last year I tried onions. Last year I didn’t water those as much and the onions didn’t get to big.
I know that feeling all to well as I’m sure a lot of members here do too.
Romeo is one of my smallest bushes, but it’s full of flowers now and looks great to me.
It would be interesting to experiment with grafting other cherries onto a romance series rootstock. Would they grow as bushes?
Maybe any cherry could be a bush cherry, or at least any tart one.
Actually I should have said flower buds. CJ is just opening, and Romeo might be a week yet.