Not@home wrote:


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 have heard that, too, so hope mine will be ok. When I made pies with
the NS's, I diluted the juice with water a little because they have high
acid, and everybody loved them. They freeze well and easily and keep
longer than most people keep frozen stuff.


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 would think mine was due to one having been damaged by a teen going
rambunctious, then getting scraped with the mower (it had a bole-like
scar growth at the ground level). But when the other went that wasn't
like it, it was either a virus or they had just reached the end of their
life cycle.


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.

Now that you explain your needs and desires, if that is what you want,
it should be fine. The shade factor is important, much as I love my
trees, I am paying for not having enough sunny spots for my flowers.
One must choose. I didn't think of some of that when I planted many
years ago. So you deal with what is.

Go with the standard and be happy with it. It will look pretty at
blossoming and fruiting time. Bet you wish you had more room, too, but
again we have to deal with what is or get a bigger place which is not a
good option for many of us.

And you may get occasional people asking if they can have some like I
did :-). I had plenty to share because I really didn't NEED that many,
just enjoy watching them do their thing and a few pies to look forward to.




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.