Juliet Cherry

Which Gisela? 3, 5, or 12? Where did you buy it? Vanwells? nvm, I realized this is probably Gisela 5 from Raintree.

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@JustPeachy
You were likely thinking of evans dwarf cherry a likely child of montmorency.

Yeah it was from Raintree most likely or One green world. She is buried in snow currently but it was the strongest anchoring gisela to wind as i did not believe that cj on its own roots would make it there. Juliet is doing fine

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Vincent a member here bought a CJ grafted. Check it out!

What’s cool is if you had a dud tart cherry, like say Danube turned out to be low producer, you could top work it with Carmine Jewel. I wonder if the Carmine Jewel cherries would be bigger???
I have 2 Montmorency trees and I keep them under 8 feet. Some of my trees are 8 years old, and it has worked great, but you need the time to do it. Not that bad. I enjoy shaping the trees a lot.So I don’t mind, and have the time, You may not.

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Gisela 3,5, and 12 are all very well anchored. Gisela 6 is not.

I’m not having any problems with it, a mighty White Gold I have on 6. It is an awesome tree as far as growth.

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It’s all relative I suppose.

What is your soil type like? In many of the commercial Michigan cherry orchards (as well as Uof Michigan test plots), it’s been removed because they have a tendency to lean in sandy soil. A lot of growers were throwing pea gravel on top to try to keep them free standing straight.

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Clay loam

OK, makes sense, and good info to know thanks! Yeah the east side has clay from the glaciers, our soul is not acidic like the west is. I have to grow blueberries in raised beds.
Otherwise our soil is better than any top soil you could buy. Everything grows like weeds in it.

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It also depends on your wind conditions I’m told by UofM. If you have sandy soil and nearly no wind, I doubt it will be a problem. I’m sure there’s some sort of threshold where a bit of wind and sandy soil or somewhat sandy soil and high wind will cause leaning. Many of the commercial orchards (in Michigan) were being advised to move to higher density Gisela 5 plantings or replace with Gisela 12 (which is nearly identical to G6 with better anchoring but induces less excessive cropping than G5 - less work thinning for larger fruit). For most of the Great Lakes, I was told that Gisela 6 tends to develop leaning at maturity, simply because of the greater tree mass for wind loads and relatively poorer root anchoring relative to other Gisela.

None of this really matters though. If you look at the commercial nurseries. Most are moving to G12 anyways to simplify inventory since its basically the same as G6 with a better rootsystem. Vanwells, ACN, etc… etc…

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I’m not seeing it, I’m less than 10 miles from Lake St Clair. We have 40 to 50 MPH winds all the time. Straight as an arrow. This will be 7th leaf this year. Fruited 4 crops so far.The last 3 were tremendous. I also have Utah Giant and Emperor Francis grafted to it.
All the same I will avoid G6 in the future. I hope not to have to buy another, ever though.
It’s not ever going to get bigger. I have kept it small Same size for the last 3 years. Renewal and stub pruning is being done too.

I’m just going off what Greg Lang has told me for NW Michigan growers and their windy site at their cherry research station. I wonder if it’s also partly due to pruning system, since what a home orchard does and what a commercial operation does will look quite different.

At the end of the day, none of this probably matters. It’s hard to find stuff on G6 even if you wanted it, since nurseries are going to G12.

Yeah it’s good info and interesting. It is more open there too.

Juliet in tree form, all 3 of these seem to be doing well. Got a lot of flowers this spring.

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Nice pruning to get it that way!

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It’s easier to just graft it on a rootstock. Dwarfness is gone. It will grow like any tart cherry.
Looks to me that is grafted on a rootstock.

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Aren’t all the tree forms of the bush cherries grafted to rootstocks?
Mine flowered good but have been in the cold and then rain.

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Well you could prune it that way, but it might not work?
I have a Rose of Sharon and I decided to make it a single trunk form. I just decided. Some dispute when to prune but all agree not late spring. So I thought of this too late to prune. It is a bush right now prune to 2 feet or so. grows about 2 feet a year. This can be made into a small tree, or a large tree!

mine isn’t grafted, but I’m going to try to grow some bali seedlings to graft also

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So you shaped that? As for sure the typical form is identical to what Johnnyapples has .
If on it’s own roots it should sucker too.

Lets see the other two.