Newbie Trying Cherries in Pots

General Fruit Growing
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Early last year, we moved to a new Chester County Pennsylvania HOA where you can’t plant anything in the ground. We do have decks, currently holding one fifteen year old Hinnomaki Red potted gooseberry brought over from the old house, Primus White and White Imperial currants – one of each – planted last spring, and a Lapins cherry, on Gisela 3, planted on March 29, 2024.

Experience tells me I can hardly go wrong with potted currants and gooseberries, but potted cherry trees look to be more of a challenge, and are what I’d like to discuss here. Over the past forty years, I’ve collected a shelf of books on growing small and potted fruit trees – enough so that I could find almost any cultural practice advocated by one expert criticized by another :slight_smile:

So I have questions and would love to discuss some of this.

First question – is there any place on the internet much better to discuss this stuff than here? Or have I found the closest to best place there is?

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I have a cherry tree in a 30 gallon, a cherry tree is a 40 gallon and one sharing a 100 gallon grow bag with other stuff for sweet cherries. I have tart cherry bushes too. Nothing seems to like overwinter in your traditional hard pots here in CO. The hydroponic pots seem to be the way to go with either a plastic hydroponics pot or a grow bag. My tart cherries have been very happy and want to grow. My sweet cherries do not want to grow much as all. I have had a bubblegum plum for 2-3 years and it is starting to produce this year. My donut peaches from 2020 are now producing in 2024. My sweet cherries from the same time period refuse to produce. They flower but refuse to produce.

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I think you will have a hard time finding a better place than here. There may be one somewhere that is focused on growing fruit trees in pots but I am not aware of it existing. In most cases people plant fruit trees in the ground, only a small percentage of people use pots. Most of the discussion about planting fruit trees in pots centers on apples. I think that is due to apples having many dwarfing rootstocks for a long time, apples are fairly easy to grow, and many people plant apples trees.

Cherries are going to be much harder to grow in Pennsylvania. This is especially true for sweet cherries. You will need to spray to control brown rot. The trees will need to be covered with nets or bird scare tape to prevent birds from eating your crop. For sweet cherries you need to pick cultivars like WhiteGold and BIackGold that work in the East. I would read through these two sweet cherry threads to get an idea of what is required to grow sweet cherries in the East.

If you’re growing in pots I would try to stay with Gisela 3 and Gisela 5 rootstocks which are both dwarfing and precocious. I think you can succeed growing cherries in pots but their going to require more work and know-how than gooseberries.

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Thanks for the very high quality replies to my OP from yourself and elivings1.

I believe you.

Yes, that’s why I’m here. We have netting. I was waiting to spray to make sure it is clearly needed, but I guess that’s a given. Finding a tiny premixed quantity of propiconazole seems difficult.

The only thing about cherries I thought might be easier, than with other tree fruits, is minimal care needed, beyond watering, if we vacation in July or August.

I see from this link, previously posted, that Lapins was a questionable choice:

https://www.canr.msu.edu/uploads/files/Research_Center/NW_Mich_Hort/Training_Pruning_Varities/SweetCherryVarietiesEasternUS_2004.pdf

I wanted WhiteGold, described in my next link, but passed because it wasn’t offered on a highly dwarfing rootstock:

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=5bb5d970cceeeffda3932c3350c83404a05b974a

However, I’ve been reading Ann Ralph’s book, and she seems to think sufficient late-June pruning makes rootstock-influenced dwarfing unimportant. But she never mentions growing in pots. Here’s a link to her book:

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ann-ralph/grow-a-little-fruit-tree/9781612120546

Our tree, as of today, complete with nine cherries, is below. It came in the mail from Raintree, 51 days ago, as a single whip which I trimmed to 20 inches. Pot is 15 inch diameter filled with ProMix BK55 and some "Osmocote Plus Outdoor and Indoor” fertilizer. Feel free to tell me what mistakes I made so far beyond the variety.

Lapins
Lapins1920×2550 411 KB

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For the propiconazole I would just buy Bonide Infuse and mix up a quart or less at a time. You can mix up small quantities, you don’t need to mix up a gallon or more at a time. Also other alternatives would be Captan or Indar.

Cherries will be harder than apples. If you pick the right apples you can get away with 2 or 3 sprays per year. Or even in some cases 1 spray a year. Sweet cherries ideally would need 5- 6 sprays.

Lapins isn’t the optimum choice but you got a tree and you will learn a lot from it. Also all of us started out sometime and there is a learning curve involved. In any endeavor you start out and then get more skilled as you gain more experience.

WhiteGold is available on Gisela 3 and Gisela 5 from Raintree Nursery. Some years it’s available on both in other years only one of the two will be available. Since the Pandemic trees sell out quickly so you want to buy as soon as the inventory is open for ordering.

I have read Ann Ralph’s book and I wrote a review of it on amazon. Her book is good in terms of pruning, the advantages of dwarf trees, and why you want trees that ripen at different times of the year. She is from an arid climate (California) and has experienced little disease or insect pressure. Because of this her book has no information about picking disease resistant trees and protecting fruit from insects so bear that in mind when looking at her book.

The same goes for her book when it comes to tree sizes. Trees in California receive little water so controlling size is much easier, Apples for example in California using a M111 rootstock and keeping the tree at eight feet height is easy. In my state (Illinois) with my fertile soil a tree on M111 wants to be thirty feet tall and trying to keep it at eight feet while getting it to bear good crops is going to be very tough.

I think you still want to use dwarfing rootstocks in pots. Although the pot itself will provide a dwarfing effect since it limits root growth. But with high vigor rootstocks I think the risk of root girdling is higher. Even with dwarf rootstocks I think you will have to prune the roots every so often to prevent girdling of the roots. At least I have read this I don’t have trees in pots.

A guide to brown rot you might find useful.

Here are two spray guides we have on the forum you might also find useful.

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That isn’t true here, I can get cherries with a single app of insecticide but fungicide requirements depend a lot on weather because in set springs you may need to protect the blossoms from rotting, but I can’t imagine more than 3 apps being required. I settle for 2.

It seems that cherries size up so quickly in spring that the window for plum curc is limited to the first insecticide spray I do on apples and they leave cherries alone after that.

This is something I’ve only been doing for a couple of years, so it’s to early to say if I will consistently have success with it, but I can’t see why cherries would require more protection than apples beyond their susceptibility to rot.when they are very small.

I also only spray Apricots with a single app of insecticide.

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@alan,
I usually agree with you but I would like to point out something here.
As a professional orchardist, you are able to use a commercial-grade synthetic chemicals that are more powerful than the ones home gardeners are allowed to buy. Some of the spray you use has a good kickback power allowing you to use only one or two spray to stop those nasty pests, namely plum curculios and oriental fruit moths.

As a backyard cherry grower in wet New England, I used to fail miserably using pesticide like Triazicide to fight pests and fungicide like Myclobutanil (Immunox) and later, immunox plus Captan to fight brown rot.

Once I switched to Zeta cypermethrin (Sevin), it has worked better but at least with 2-3 spray since PC arrive early and OFM come later.

For yhe past 2-3 years, I switched from myclobutanil to Indar and the brown rot has bern much reduced. Still it needs 2-3 or even 4 sprays depending how wet our spring and summer are.

Not everyone can or want to afford Indar, @mroot ’s suggestion of propiconazole is a less expensive alternative.

OP lives in PA, spray is needed to get edible cherries.

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I only speak for my specific region and have been going this low-spray of cherries and cots for just a couple of seasons- it’s a work in progress. OFM has never been a problem for cherries here- it mainly just causes flagging of peaches but occasionally infests the fruit of very late ones- and I never put down insecticide on orchard trees after the first week of June except in an occasional stink bug or AFM crisis. .

Pest pressure, as you know, varies from region to region but you cannot even assume pest pressure is the same from orchard to orchard in the same area as I often find a lot of variation in sites very close to each other. There is also a great deal of variation season to season.

The point I’m making is really that no one can state exactly what will be needed at any particular site and the only way to find out is to watch your trees closely.

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Agree. I just speak from my own experience as a small time backyard gardener fighting pests and diseases using chemicals available for for backyard orchardists.

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That is the kind of pot I warned against. Those pots will kill the tree in a year from my experience. Like someone else mentioned it basically strangles the tree. A grow bag will air prune the roots to prevent strangling of the tree. My family hates my pots because they are black grow bags but I would rather my stuff alive than dead. I also think it just gets too cold in those pots. The snow will insulate them in a grow bag but in that it will not insulate. I have tried growing plants to zone 3 with beaked hazelnut and they failed to come back the fallowing spring. I have managed to keep my fig alive in a pot like this but it has to come inside for the winter and cherries need chill hours.

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Wow. This is a great thread with lots of info not in my books and that I will have to read over and over.

Growing ribes and raspberries in plastic pots, in the Philadelphia area, they have survived the winter. But I have not grown tree fruits in pots. I was thinking that I could move cherry tree pots next to the house and hope the slightly higher temperature is enough winter protection.

A few weeks ago I bought, from Amazon, without much confidence, something that I have not tried before, “Evoio 4 Pack Fruit Protection Bags with Drawstring, Garden Netting Plant Covers.” These have a very fine mesh so that bird protection can supposedly be achieved without a stiff frame. And they claim it will stop a lot of insects. Is that plausible? My trepidation is that it will also stop a lot of light, so I have waited to put it on. Seems like it should at least work with ribes. I see netting discussion threads here and might mention there.

I wonder if the decks attached to our house being about seven feet above ground level, with sprayed moved grass around the house, means we won’t get normal problems as quickly. However, I do get that rainy humid Philly summers are a problem.

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If netting were to stop insects coming through that would also stop bees from coming through for pollination. I read bees can come through 1/4 inch mesh netting but am unsure how small of netting it can go to before bees stop. I use netting to deter animals from destroying my plants when young. It is hard to remove when it gets big enough but it works to protect it. Just watch your footing if you are around bird netting as it is an endeavor trying to get your feet out of it. A problem some people have with it is netting can kill wildlife if that is a concern to you. As an adult a massive bull snake got strangled in my netting and a robin actually got caught under netting when I was a kid. The best protection is just getting a tree up past 6 foot. Once fruit is over 6 foot it is harder for things like deer to reach. I would never underestimate squirrels or birds though fruit wise. I do find that some fruit is favored by animals more than others. I think it has been discussed on here that red fruit is more favored by animals. Also there is taste preference with animals too.

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I’m not very seasoned at this, but do have a number of trees in pots… aiming for about 1/3 of my trees, mainly because our springs can have some very cold snaps late, and want to have fruit each year.

That said, I have a white gold on G5 from Raintree on G5 in a 30 gallon windproof fabric container (rootmaker). it does have some sort of issue at the graft union, and I’m hoping the tree will pull through (otherwise looks healthy).

Some of my learnings that may apply to you as well are: Pick a cherry training system that you will use and try to get it to that form, starting in year 1. I’m aiming for KGB, but a number of training systems can be found in this article. Note that they call G5 semi-dwarf, not dwarf (which I’d have thought of it as).

Another one of note is that understanding your growing medium is important, and initially I was unaware of things like what mixes can last longer-term and which ones may not last or go anaerobic.

I also should have started using fertilizer earlier on… there are both organic and synthetic time release options. This year I’m trying Tree-Tone. If you do use tree-tone, note that they don’t publish their container feeding recommendations, which are different than in-ground (have to call and ask for that).

Good luck with your cherry and other trees!

Edit to add: If trying peaches (not sure about your climate), the natural dwarf peaches can be a good option in containers. There are a few threads about it here. I have and El Dorado, and it has a lot of beautiful pink blooms and sets heavily (2nd year had about 80 fruitlets on the 16" tall tree, which I just thinned back to 5).

image

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FWIW, I was reading a thread here about apples in containers and was seeing reports of people planting both dwarf and semi-dwarf rootstocks and they felt that the semi-dwarf (M111) actually performed better in container than the dwarfs. That said, I am trying both dwarfs and semi-dwarfs to find out for myself.

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Forgot to mention… if you haven’t already seen it, there are some folks who let their containers root into the ground over a depression with compost, or even just plain dirt, for the season. This reduces the dependency/risk associated with daily watering needs and lets the plant keep some of its feet cooler. Some folks just use plastic containers, others use fabric containers with mesh bottoms or poke holes, some even use boxes with metal fencing across the bottom. I was at a horticulturist’s home the other day, where he had an empty pot embedded in the ground, and when asked, explained it was common for nurseries to do a pot-in-pot approach for trees… in this approach, they don’t actually root, but they do keep the roots cool.

Anyhow, a few options for getting around that whacky restriction. I think it would be hard to call a container with roots in the ground ‘planted’ in ground.

The netting goes on after fruitlets form.

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As I mentioned I found netting good for deterring animals as well so I often times just put it on small plants. The biggest downside is the weight with things like snow. They would likely not know that it is a pot with no bottom unless they are going around lifting plants. There is a lot more resistance to a pot planted in ground and I would say never underestimate what people in a HOA will do. Not only will it have more resistance but it will be a massive plant because in a pot it will dwarf it but in the ground plants will naturally get big and in the east everything gets full size of what it will get. It either seems they don’t want to go gardening and don’t mind the fees so they are for the HOA or they want to garden and are against a HOA.

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Fine mesh also interrupts airflow which increases fungal pressure in humid regions.

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This is beyond crazy to me, the amount of control some people like to impose upon others never ceases to amaze me.

With that being said, I think you can definitely get your mileage out of container grown fruit. Why stop with a cherry, expand that horizon. But onto the spray schedule, I think you won’t need to spray potentially. You live in a desert, and likely the pest pressure will be minimal, I think even fungi may be minimal due to being in a container as soil borne pathogens are less prevalent if it wasn’t contaminated to begin with. As @alan said, I agree 100% your tree will tell you how much or often you need to spray. I lean to the you may not need to spray, only net. However others have more trouble than I with needing to spray, I don’t spray anything with the exception being neem a few times in 3 years and copper fungicide 2-3 times on plants that needed it.

Welcome to the forum, and good luck with that cherry tree. Also I’m sorry for such an oppressive HOA situation.

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When I looked at houses in AZ I can see why they make rules. We went to a place that had a HOA and one that did not. One neighborhood without the HOA had a bunch of stuff in the front of their lawn and it looked super trashy. The HOA neighborhood was cookie cutter stuff but it was very clearly clean and looked a lot better. If it is a neighborhood people tend to take care of their stuff or just an affordable state that gets people in who can afford to it works to not have a HOA. If you are in a place that houses have less value than surrounding areas they may need the buffer of rules to be good.

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Hopefully the new formula Sevin is as affective as the Asana most commercial applicators use around here to protect orchards on residential properties. Pyrethroids are cheap, affective enough and have very low mammal toxicity. Some of the applicators even call Asana organic, maybe because it is chemically similar to pyrethrin. Of course, pyrethroids aren’t organic, but calling them that is good for business.