I’m OK with being stubborn for a tree or two.
You have to have a few experiments going on to keep things interesting.
It can get quite hot here and dry… it is always mulched good but not really watered during dry spells.
It does not meet my… has to grow like a weed and produce good fruit standard. If we were keeping this home… i would try completely top working it over to Monty. Perhaps better luck with tart cherry.
I knew that success with a sweet cherry here was a longshot. Each year our Walmart gets in those bags of big deep purple sweet cherries… that are soooo good.
That is why I gave Lapins a shot.
I tried an apricot here too… it rejected southern TN also.
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Lapins takes longer than a lot of other varieties to fruit.
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Since I have the little tree on a decent rootstock and can control the root moisture (it’s in a raised bed), I can add as few other varieties to it with little effort or cost.
That all assumes it survives…which is not a forgone conclusion.
Like @fruitnut said, I am confused why you don’t even see blooms on your Lapins - blooms converting to fruit is another story. My guess is also, it is really water starved. Mulch is not of much use if you are having a dry spell and the soil underneath goes bone dry. For eg, you can pile as much mulch as you want in CA, but all plants needs irrigation in summer (except for some natives).
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@californicus … apples peaches persimmons che jujube plums mulberries raspberries blackberries blueberries strawberries goumi grapes muscadine (and probably a few other things I forgot) produce just fine here with no irrigation all year when mulched well.
In a normal year… we get plenty of rain especially in spring summer winter… fall can be dry.
In the spring… i regularly start new fruit trees, bushes, cane fruit, vines, etc… with one watering at planting time.
Pretty much everything I start gets lots of compost added then a nice layer of wood chips.
If the lapins is stressed… it sure does not show it… it is a very pretty tree… nice and healthy looking.
It has some very nice fruit spurs on it… gets my hopes up every spring… then nothing but leaves.
In year 2 and 3… it did produce a half dozen blossoms… but no fruit. Year 4 and 5 no blossoms.
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I won’t compare sweet cherries to other species as they are more finicky. Having said that, your second point is very true. With water stress, you will see curling and dry leaves, early defoliation and other classic signs. I agree, it can’t be that. Have you tried any low nitrogen, high PK fertilizers? Sometimes too much nitrogen can make trees put more energy on vegetative growth.
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FWIW I’ve had a Lapins cherry in Irvine (Zone 10) in CA. It’s been in a pot for the last 2-3 years. It seems to finally be showing some buds this year so we will see. But this thread doesn’t make me hopeful 
…
Is anyone producing cherries in SoCal? If so, what varieties?
I’ve also seriously considered a) getting rid of it, and b) throwing ice into the pot every day for a week or two in the evening covered with a blanket.
It’s now in a spot that won’t get any afternoon Sun, so it’s protected from the harsh heat here.
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My Lapins today March 12… here in southern middle TN.
Still happy, healthy, no sign of stress…
Started it in 2018… so this 7th leaf for it.
NO FRUIT yet.
Its branches are covered in these… every spring I think surly it will bloom and fruit this year.
I added 5 grafts of Montmorency to it last spring… adding more this spring.
TNHunter
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Ok… ok… now I have to take back all the bad things I said about my Lapins cherry.
Today I found this happening.
Looks like it is finally going to do a significant bloom… and hopefully fruit.
Happy to see many blossoms happening !!!
TNHunter
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@TNHunter
Those are a ridiculous amount of blooms in a small space!
Maybe, if mine survives, my Lapins will give me a show too.
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Awesome, mine still waking up im in north FL.
My royal crimson has produced about 17 to 18 blossoms thos year. I think my tree os 5 years old now. But had no growth last year LIKE ALL my trees. Also year two was a loss and almost dies cause of poor transplant. Hoping for pollination now. Will see. I thonk the secret now will be to get the tree much bigger.
My lapins also did not grow last uear. A vad case of thrips seems to have stunted all my trees. That and the weather. But I’m thinking with size and a 440 hours like we got this year and then not a lot of rain at bloom time should work. At least the crimson royal. I’ll update on my lapins if anything interesting ever happens.
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@TNHunter any update on your cherries? I am debating whether it is worth trying them here in Athens GA (8a). The folks at Isons swear that Royal Lee and Minnie Royal should do fine for me, but I haven’t seen much in the way of success stories on here for cherries in the southeast. Also curious how your montmorency scions are doing? I’d be even more interested in pie cherries, but seeing really mixed info on whether they would be easier or harder to grow in my area (Isons thought harder, but I’ve seen them listed for zone 8). I’ve started a hedgerow of Nanking cherries last year as a sort of backup but obviously would love real cherries if it’s realistic.
@Meganlynn … my grafts of montmorency are doing fine on my lapins cherry.
They bloomed and fruited well last year.
My lapins also produced its first crop and it was a pretty heavy crop.
Unfortunately… we had excessive rains when they were ripening… I mean daily or every other day… it just kept comming.
All of that fruit split and rotted. It was so disappointing.
I now have a montmorency cherry tree out in my new orchard. It grew well last year… 8 ft or so.
Hopefully one of these years we have a dry period when cherries are ripening. Lots of rain and ripening cherries… just does not end well.
The lapins will stay with our current home… which will eventually be sold… the montmorency cherry in my new orchard… at our new home future location … will be my hope for cherries some day.
Year before last we got one perfectly ripe montmorency cherry from one of my grafts and it was delicious.
It was mostly dry when it ripened and all was well.
TNHunter
Thanks, that is encouraging! I can accept some failures if I can get some fruit in some years. Sounds worth a try
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Sadly I lost my Lapins last year. Came out of winter not looking good at all. Pretty sure it had bacterial Canker. And it was everywhere. I cut it down after about half the branches had died. It was everywhere in the tree. I still have four other low chill cherries growing. Never had a Cherry yet though. I’m in North Florida a little bit South of Lake City. Going to fertilize heavier this year as my cherries haven’t put on any growth the last two years really.
Hmm, is this a problem with lapins? My tree that I think is lapins ( tags got switched around in the check out process at the nursery, it’s either lapins or bing but probably lapins with the bloom time) has pretty bad cankers, much worse than the other two cherries next to it.
Not sure if it is common or not. Trying to grow a cherry tree in Florida isn’t the best idea in the world I’m sure. The tree had done well. Then two years ago I had a year with little growth. Then last year (2025) when it came out of dormancy it just wasn’t acting right. One whole branch was dead and yea I had oozing that rapidly spread all over the place.
A few years before that my Royal Crimson which is right beside it had canker and I cut and torched it out of the trunk and it has been OK ever since. I thought that one got it because the transplant went horribly bad the first year tearing 2/3 of the roots. It had major shock. Survived but in the fall of that year go canker real bad. Or maybe it was the next year it got canker. I have three other cherries on the other side of the yard (a minnie, a royal crimson, and a royal lee). None with canker yet. The Minnie had just never grown well for some reason. I tried a two tree in one hole planting and it just hasn’t done well. They are beginning to wake up now. I doubt I’ll get any blooms. We had a strange winter here in North Florida. All of the cold came very late and it was very cold. I think the trees like it better when the cold starts earlier and is more spread out. Even my early peaches didn’t bloom super well compared to usual. I didn’t water all winter and it was dry though also. So I think that is part of it as well. I’ve just been too busy of late.
I won’t be trying the Lapins again here. I just don’t think it gets cold enough. It did seem like I was starting to get more blooms on it every year up until 2025 which killed it. The lapins growth structure was nice. And honestly it seemed to be doing really well until all the sudden it wasn’t. Pretty sure it was bacterial canker and it just took it very quickly.
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Florida sounds tough for sure. I’m in the opposite end, z5, where it’s just barely warm enough for sweet cherries. I think I’ll try to cut out the canker spots and spray the wounds with copper and see if I can get on top of it.
So when I cut mine out I was just using a carving knife. And as I cut the flesh of the tree changed color. At first I didn’t realize it so I just kept cutting then at some point I realized it was changing color as I cut and I had probably got past the canker. Then I purchased one of those mini mini torches from Lowes. It is like a glorified lighter but it definitely puts out a real torch just a tiny one. And I burned the infected area real good. The tree healed up the same way it does when the bark layer is destroyed and rolled up over the wounded area. It is now pretty much all closed up. I also sealed the damaged area with a product I found on the internet.
I know people say NOT to dress the wounds. But it was such a large area. Like half the diameter of the trunk back when the trunk was much smaller. I used a product called, “Tree Bandage”. I can’t tell you if it scientifically worked for me or not. I just know I’ve used it here and there after having to prune off large branches and on my cherry tree where I cut out the bacterial spot. Oh I did use it one other time as well. I got a sad Charlie Brown Crimson Royal Cherry tree and the branches after the third year were so messed up I knew I had to do something drastic. So I headed off the entire tree. Just took the top off totally. I also dressed that would with Tree bandage which is a silicone sealer basically as I understand it. That tree came back and I’ve got a much better base now. But maybe things would have been fine without it who knows. The marketing sold me, I’ve used it a few times with good or at least NOT BAD results.