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In my 8th year on this property and this "cherry" tree has done nothing but make leaves since I've been here. I assumed it was just a wild cherry but it never produced any of the garden pea size cherries. Damn near put it in my woodpile as it's just another damn tree to mow around.

This year all of a sudden though, I have "cherries".

I've read they need another variety of cherry to pollinate, but this is a lone cherry tree with only a couple of apple trees and some white pines close nearby. An apple won't help pollinate a cherry, will it? There are some wild cherry in a fence row 50 or 60 yards away.

If these are edible cherries I'll be making some Cherry Wine with 'em.

The heck I got here? A Ranier?

Apparently you're not from around here.

Plant another cherry tree?

It appears that 'somebody' did just that, within range to pollinate FA's tree.

Just one tree? Birds are gonna get them all before you do.

While sour cherries will self pollinate, sweet cherries are a different species and do require another tree of a different variety. A sour can't pollinate a sweet. Some sweets will produce a few fruits without a pollinator but any kind of a decent crop does require it. They have to be within about 100' of each other to get bees going back and forth between them.

Here are a couple links to charts showing the best pollinators. I'm assuming that's a Ranier so, according to the chart, the best pollinators would be Sam, Van, Bing, Royal Ann, Lambert, Montmorency, Stella, Compact Stella, or Garden Bing
POLLINATORS
ANOTHER CHART

Texas?

Nope.

Probably.

Maybe an owl decoy perched on a limb.

Several stray cats hang around back in the brush, maybe they'll pitch in.

Net.

Nobody close enough to do that. The only thing that's changed was I yanked out a crappy apple near it that was growing too crooked and hard to mow under. That did put more sun on the Cherry but I don't know what else could have made it produce all of a sudden.

No spring frost this year which is kind of odd.

Yeah, my apple made it from 'blooms to itty-bitty apples' so far without frost[but we came damn close the past 3 nights].

Maybe all of the high winds we've had this spring pushed pollen further than normal?

That might be your answer right there.

Maybe that's all there is to it. Weird it's not done anything in the past 8 years. House was put here in 2004 and the apple trees were planted shortly after that, and probably this cherry too I would guess now. I don't know if it ever produced before i took over.

Thanks for the links.

I'm not sure about cherry trees, but bee's pollinate apple tree's.

Well, maybe. I always get a lot of spring wind anyway though up on this ridge. We had some nights a couple three weeks ago that damn near frosted. I left a couple tomato plants outside without thinking and it blacked most of their leaves. Trimmed em back and I think they might recover.

Maybe bees hitting both trees did the trick?

Both the Cherry and the two Apples were in bloom at the same time.

A fun mystery! Possibly the slightly warmer temps had pollinators active earlier than normal and traveling farther than normal to find early season pollen sources and someone within a mile has a compatible cross-pollinating tree? Seems like our mason bees were out early with the pears being weeks earlier than normal. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Seems uncharacteristic for a cherry to take that long to set its first fruit, but could also be a combination of sun and minerals delayed the onset until now. I guess you’ll know in the coming years if this was a one-off.

It’ll be interesting as the fruit ripens to see if you can figure out the varietal. With mail-order being an option for trees, could be most anything, I suppose, but the color and characteristics can hopefully help you narrow it down.

I have 5 sweet cherries and two of them are Stella which I think are self-fruitful but they’re only 3yo so no experience with the fruit from them yet.

Either way, try and keep as many birds out as you can and enjoy them!

^^ this is what happens to my wild cherry trees ^^

With the pines so close by the soil might be a bit too acidic? The apples there with it never really do much either except feed my deer a treat and the occasional groundhog I catch climbed up in them. The apples always look blighted.

If I can manage to get 10 pounds of cherries off it I can make about a gallon of Cherry Wine, and that would be a win-win.

crows and squirrels get most of mine...

The only fix for birds is a net which is a big PIA to do. My best solution is reflective ribbons. They aren’t foolproof by a long shot. I have several trees so I leave the ribbons off of 1. Most of the birds go to that one and leave the others alone

I bought a plumb tree advertised as 'fruitless". Guess someone nearby has one as well. Had one or two on it two years ago.. about a dozen tiny ones last year. This year got dozens of them.

that. I am sold on BioAdvanced Tree & Shrub Protect and feed crystals.

Birds are extremely visual. They will ignore "Gold" cherries and hammer mulberries if they are available.

A bird might have planted a sweet cherry pit close enough to pollinate and that feral tree probably got enough years under its belt to start flowering. If I were a betting man, that is what I would bet.

Around here, the smart money paints the trunk with white latex paint (it can be cheap, ceiling paint) to avoid sun-scald in the winter. An electric fence around the trunk to deter 'coons is also in your future.

Where do I buy reflective strip?

Where do I buy reflective strip?

How big are the cherries?

You dont.

Hold off 3 days then start a thread to beg some off another rube gratis.

Duh

Between dime and nickel in diameter right now. Which kinda took me by surprise considering how early in the year it is. I don't have a clue about the growth rate of cherries, but when I looked up and saw them hanging there, it was a holy chit will ya look at that......

I don't have cherry trees, but these work great on my avocados when they they are small. I put them on when they are about the size of a marble. Usually I get wiped out by critters and birds. Since I started using the mesh bags I have lots of fruit on the trees. So far, so good.

You can get them in different sizes on amazon. It's a lot easier than trying to put a big net over the entire tree.


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FJYXB5V?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

Strip mall !





.....groan....

Amazon, for one. Search for 'reflective bird tape'.

I cut it in about 15 to 18" pieces and put at least one on each limb with clothes pins. It'll look like a '60's Christmas tree with gobs of icicles.

Thank you

cherrie trees may need so many COLD days to release their dormancy. definitely need pollinators from other trees. buy one of the COSCO multi-grafted cherry trees that have three or four different varieties on one bole, to assure some cross pollination... and no, apple trees can not pollinate cherry trees...

good luck.