Newbie Trying Cherries in Pots

[mroot]

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.

Brown Rot

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

Spray Schedule- Synthetic Materials

Alan Haigh- The Home Orchard and Nursery Co. REPRINT PERMISSION FROM ALAN HAIGH REQUIRED Low Spray Schedule for Home Orchards in the Northeast Here’s my spray schedule for the scores of orchards I manage around SE NY adapted for home owners managing a few fruit trees. It has functioned well for me for over 2 decades, although J. Beetles and brown rot of stone fruit increases the number of sprays and necessary pesticides some years some sites. Stink bugs are also an increasing problem,…

Low-Impact Spray Schedule (2019 Edition)

Here is my “low impact” spray schedule, updated from this old version - Low Impact Spray Schedule (old version). This has been refined over about 15 years of successes and failures. My rough guide for low impact is no wide-spectrum poisons, which also means no PyGanic or rotenone. Spinosad is about as broad a poison that I use. I don’t personally draw the line at organic vs not, but this schedule is mostly organic and I will suggest some substitutions if you want to be 100% organic. My goal …