I have never sprayed anything on my Lapins… I don’t even spray for Plum Curculio (they hit sweet cherries, just not as bad as plums). Its right next to the house, everyone walks right where its growing…so i just leave it. The one year i had the best harvest, was the year we had no rain around ripening time. Rot seems to hold off until they turn darker red…and then it spreads like wildfire any time we get moisture. What i did do last year is i took small sheets of plastic and wrapped a few long branches that held a lot of fruit…that did work…the fruit didn’t cook either, although i did worry about that so i left somewhat of a gap.
That one looks like it will be 10 ft in a few years. I’ve had one in the ground for 4 yrs and it doesn’t look like Vincent’s. His has less lateral growth and very heavy flowering. @Vincent_8B, keep us updated on that one. The rootstock or very heavy fertilizing or both may be the difference.
Yes Dennis, I will keep updating. It’s taller than me now. I rather like the tree than bush because of room limitation. Maybe the root stock makes it tall, I try not to use fertilizer much on my fruit trees.
Meanwhile, at the latitude where these cherries were bred, we are having a very very slow start to spring. Supposedly this is the snowiest April ever recorded, it is certainly the snowiest and coldest I can recall, plus a lot of cold rains. I am about 200 miles west of the U of Saskatchewan though. At any rate, here are my Romance cherries on April 23, after yet another snowfall. Envious of all you people enjoying spring blooms and good weather.
Wow, those are huge. Did the roots look good? What’s the little plant with the giants? It looks like my Romeo I got from them.
The Romeo I planted month ago has a few flower buds on it! Good to see that. The Juliet, a bigger bush, has lots of new leaves. Our little Crimson Passion twig has put on a few leaves, but hasn’t done much more than that.
Question on pruning Romance cherries. I planted Carmine Jewel and Crimson Passion form HoneyberryUSA at the same time - Spring of 2013. They both were just few inches high. Last year CJ gave me 5 flowers that brought me 5 berries, this year it is about 4.5 ’ tall and loaded with flowers. It is kind of reasonably dense plant. I am going only prune it a little after it is done with crop, just to remove really out of place or broken branches.
It is a different story with Crimson Passion. It is already 5.5 ’ tall, very-very dense and no a single flower. I wondering, if I prune it heavily to make the canopy light and airy instead of dense, will it get the message and start working on the flower buds, or it will just put all the energy to replace lost green mass?
i planted Brooks and Tulare sweet cherry trees several years ago. unfortunately, the Brooks died last year. Will the Romance bush cherries pollenate the Tulare? I’m almost sure it won’t, but thought i’d ask.
My Crimson passions are looking sad, one in particular. I was hoping it was just from slight damage to the lead buds or something but it’s spreading They were twigs from hbusa planted in March. They leafed out at least but I don’t know what the one tree’s problem is and the other one doesn’t look great, either. My Romeo is seeming to be mostly done flowering (a few buds still to open but most dropping/browning petals) and my carmine jewel and Juliets look to be doing well. I was thinking about some compost tea or rabbit poop around these poor Crimson passions…
I bought six bushes from hbusa last year. The Juliet turned yellow and died back to the ground. Then a new shoot came up and grew to about 14". I wanted to blame the gopher because he made a hole next to where I planted it.
They were twigs from hbusa planted in March. They leafed out at least but I don’t know what the one tree’s problem is and the other one doesn’t look great, either. My Romeo is seeming to be mostly done flowering (a few buds still to open but most dropping/browning petals) and my carmine jewel and Juliets look to be doing well. I was thinking about some compost tea or rabbit poop around these poor Crimson passions…
