Wild Cherries
Jul. 7th, 2007 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunsen_hIf you're looking for something lewd or libidinous, move along, nothing to see here. I'm talking about Prunus avium.
The first spring after I moved into my house, I planted a cherry tree in my back yard. I've always wanted one, and the folks at the garden centre a block away from my house assured me that it was a cultivar ("Tehranivee") that was self-fertile and hardy enough to do well in my zone.
The first year, it just sat there, barely growing at all. It had had three or four flowers when I planted it, but they didn't develop. The tree was coping with transplant shock, a bad infestation of aphids, and my attempts to get rid of the aphids.
The second year, it approximately doubled in height, from about 5' to about 10'. The year after that, it grew about another 5'. But there were only a few flowers, and none became fruit. Then we had a particularly harsh winter, and everything above the ground died: in the spring, only a few buds opened, then the trunk erupted in a mass of fungus. But the deep roots were not reached by the frost, as the saying goes, and something came up from the roots -- clearly the same family, but I know that the cherry was a graft on some other stock, and the possibilities were pretty broad.beable described it as a "changeling tree".
The last couple of years there have been just a few flowers, and none have ever developed into fruit which would let me find out what I've been nurturing. But this spring, I gave the tree some fertilizer spikes for fruit trees, and there were many more flowers. At this point, there appear to be exactly two maturing fruits, one almost ripe (I think). Based on the fruit and the odd little red knobs at the base of each leaf, it appears that I've got some kind of wild cherry or "Mazzard". The almost-ripe fruit is bright red and 1.5 cm across. It's hanging about a foot from the ground. The other one is about six feet up.
I'd really like to eat the fruits myself. Any suggestions on how to keep them safe from the local critters but still allow the air and sunlight in to let them mature? How can I tell when the fruits really are mature? -- I don't have a lot of room for trial and error here.
The first spring after I moved into my house, I planted a cherry tree in my back yard. I've always wanted one, and the folks at the garden centre a block away from my house assured me that it was a cultivar ("Tehranivee") that was self-fertile and hardy enough to do well in my zone.
The first year, it just sat there, barely growing at all. It had had three or four flowers when I planted it, but they didn't develop. The tree was coping with transplant shock, a bad infestation of aphids, and my attempts to get rid of the aphids.
The second year, it approximately doubled in height, from about 5' to about 10'. The year after that, it grew about another 5'. But there were only a few flowers, and none became fruit. Then we had a particularly harsh winter, and everything above the ground died: in the spring, only a few buds opened, then the trunk erupted in a mass of fungus. But the deep roots were not reached by the frost, as the saying goes, and something came up from the roots -- clearly the same family, but I know that the cherry was a graft on some other stock, and the possibilities were pretty broad.
beable described it as a "changeling tree".The last couple of years there have been just a few flowers, and none have ever developed into fruit which would let me find out what I've been nurturing. But this spring, I gave the tree some fertilizer spikes for fruit trees, and there were many more flowers. At this point, there appear to be exactly two maturing fruits, one almost ripe (I think). Based on the fruit and the odd little red knobs at the base of each leaf, it appears that I've got some kind of wild cherry or "Mazzard". The almost-ripe fruit is bright red and 1.5 cm across. It's hanging about a foot from the ground. The other one is about six feet up.
I'd really like to eat the fruits myself. Any suggestions on how to keep them safe from the local critters but still allow the air and sunlight in to let them mature? How can I tell when the fruits really are mature? -- I don't have a lot of room for trial and error here.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-07 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-07 10:23 pm (UTC)But I remembered that I had some old pieces of metal window screen in the basement, and wrapped them loosely around the branches with the cherries. It's not perfect, but probably better than nothing. (I'm hoping that the screening will not itself provide a convenient walking route for the smaller critters.)