So a couple of weeks ago, my White Gold cherry got an awful case of brown rot, which a spray of Indar cleared right up.
But now the cherries are coloring up. This is wrong. This tree has always fruited abundantly, but at the end of June, not the early middle. I tasted a couple, they’re not ripe, not good, not large enough. Not even the birds seem interested, which normally they would be all over the tree.
Did the Indar disrupt their ripening?
I don’t think Indar would have any effect on ripening time. And if it did I would think the label would mention it since it would be important to know for commercial growers. I haven’t heard of a fungicide causing early ripening but in some cases fungicides can damage leaves or cause fruit russeting in apples.
Did the tree bloom earlier this year than past years? Bloom times can move a couple of weeks depending on the year and how the Spring warm up goes. If it bloomed earlier this year this could move the ripening to an earlier date.
It’s also possible that for what ever reason the weather isn’t going to yield good fruit this year. Some years my cherries taste better than others.
Another possibility could be that the cherries are coloring up early for some reason but not ripe which would explain the small size and lack of flavor.
If your fruit set is higher than normal that can cause the fruit to be smaller. This is a common problem with trees on Gisela 5 and one of the reasons commercial growers avoid this rootstock since they are much more profitable when selling larger sized fruit.
You might want to check the fruit closely for insect and physical damage this sometimes causes fruit to ripen prematurely.
Lois,
This has happened to me more than once. All of a sudden, my developing Black Gold cherries started turning reddish color.
I thought it ripenedd prematurely. Somehow, nothing bad happened, the cherries continued to expand to their full size, turned dark and ripened as expected.
Not sure what had happened. I hope this is what is hapenning to your cherries, too.
They’re certainly not ripe yet now, so I hope that’s what happens.
The set was on the sparse side, even before the rot.
But mainly, I can’t deal with cherries now, I’m overrun with strawberries!
Reason I wonder about the Indar is reading on the label of propiconazole (same fungicide family) not to use it on Stanley type plums - not saying what the deleterious consequence would be.