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 have Montmorency's, as I think they make the best pies, and I don't
have room in the front yard for two trees.

I too have a very small yard, so the place where the old one died is
about the only place to put a new one without removing something else.
Our dwarf Montmorency in the back yard was not affected, which inclines
me to think the cause of death was not a virus.

I'm looking at the non dwarf variety, as they say it will be 15 to 20
feet tall, which will nicely shade the porch, and let the birds eat the
fruit at the top, while we enjoy the lower fruit. I have a non-dwarf
Stella in the back, which has done quite well, although it had mold on
the fruit a couple of years ago, which I attribute to inadequate
pruning. My good luck with the non-dwarf Stella is inclining me to try
a non-dwarf Montmorency.


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.