Hettie® wrote:

Not@home wrote:
My dwarf pie cherry tree has died, perhaps from old age. At least I
found no patent signs of injury or disease. We removed it and dug out
the stump (no easy task on an older tree).

I lost two about a year apart, dwarf North Star. I wasn't going to
replace them but missed them too much, waited about 3 years. If a virus
killed them (they were about 30 years old), I was afraid to put new
trees near there, but not much sunny, open space in my smallish yard.

Somebody came around, and I paid to have the stumps dug out, but there
are still remains underneath that need to decay.


I want to put in a replacement, but not a dwarf. The place we had the
old one is ideal. Is there some reason I wouldn't put the replacement
there next spring, or something I should do to prepare the site?

I wouldn't want anything but a dwarf. They are good producers, at least
mine were, every year, more than I needed, didn't do a thing to them
ever except plant well, water and mulch the first year. I bought two NS
at Home Depot early this spring and planted them a few feet away from
where the others had been, would have gone further if I had had more
space to work with. Then the deep freeze killed all the buds, one was dead.

So I didn't want to lose a year, they had a warranty, so first made sure
they had something left, dug up and returned the NS and came home with 2
Montmorency. I should have taken more care about the shape of them, but
not much to choose from that were close to the same and looked nice.
Then some bugs or some critter, possibly deer but never saw any in the
yard, ate a bunch of leaves off the one, never had any problem like that
with the NS's that I can remember.

So maybe next spring, I'll dig them out while they are still under
warranty unless they bud out too nicely and go back to NS and probably
bite the bullet and get some nicer ones from a nursery. I saw some huge
NS's at Lowe's, but they were larger than I would have wanted to tackle.

Good luck. You don't need a pair for cross pollination I guess, but I
liked having two.

I go along with your feelings on dwarf trees. I don't know why anyone would
prefer a full size tree, especially on a small lot. I had a North Star, which
was
supposed to be a dwarf, but grew to great size and took up a lot of space. I
might
have kept it, but it never produced more than a handful of cherries every year,
so
I pulled it out. Having two North Stars instead of one should help with the
pollination and result in more fruit, even though that tree is self fertile. I
still have my Montmorency, which has consistently produced fruit for the last 15
years.

Sherwin