Cherry tree

Light and exposure

The cherry tree demands sun, as much as possible. Set it in an open, bright spot facing south or west, away from large trees that would shade it. The more light it gets, the sweeter and more coloured the fruit.

A point often forgotten counts as much as the sun: air circulation. A cherry tree planted in a damp, confined corner dries poorly after the rains and catches diseases more easily. Prefer an airy position, without exposing it to the cold winds that would damage the early flowering.

Watering

A well-established cherry tree, with a developed root system, manages on its own most of the time under our climate. It is mainly the first three years that you must watch the watering, while it roots in: a good bucket of water a week in case of summer drought, at the base, without waterlogging.

One caution worth knowing: avoid sudden bursts of water just before the harvest. A heavy rain or a massive watering after a dry spell makes the cherries swell too fast and they split. A mulch at the base smooths out those swings by keeping the soil evenly cool.

Soil and repotting

The cherry tree likes deep, loose and above all well-drained soils. It hates standing water around the roots, which causes suffocation and gummosis. In heavy, clayey ground, plant on a small mound and improve the pit with compost and a little coarse sand to help the water run off.

It is happy in a neutral to slightly chalky soil, which is handy for many of the grounds in the Herve region. Just avoid decidedly acid soils that are waterlogged in winter, where it languishes and suffers at the collar.

Temperature and humidity

On the cold side, the cherry tree is tough: the wood withstands our winters without trouble, and the tree even needs a good spell of cold to flower properly in spring. So it is not winter that worries it.

The danger comes from spring. The flowering is early, sometimes from the first half of April, right in the window of the Belgian late frosts. A night at minus 2 degrees on open flowers, and the harvest is lost for the year. On a small dwarfed tree, you can throw a winter fleece over it on forecast critical nights; on a large specimen, you cross your fingers and choose from the start a spot that is not too early.

Pruning and upkeep

Here is the gesture that changes everything with the cherry tree: prune in the green, that is to say just after the harvest, in summer, when the tree is still in full sap. Never prune in winter. Wounds made during the cold, damp season heal poorly and open the door wide to canker, gummosis and silver leaf disease, three troubles that can condemn the tree.

Stay light. Remove dead wood, crossing branches and those heading inwards, air the centre to let the light through, and shorten what climbs too high to keep the tree accessible. On a dwarfing rootstock like Gisela, this summer pruning is enough to keep a compact shape, easy to protect with a net.

Pests and diseases

The first scourge of the Belgian cherry tree is the cherry fruit fly. The female lays in the ripening fruit, and you find a small white maggot inside. Good news: the early varieties, harvested early, largely escape the egg-laying that starts later in the season. Yellow sticky traps help to follow the flight and limit the laying.

Next come brown rot, that brown decay which mummifies the fruit and sometimes climbs onto the shoots in humid weather, and the black aphids that curl up the tips of the young shoots in spring. You cut and destroy the mummified fruit, you tolerate the aphids when the ladybirds do the work. And of course there are the birds, great lovers of cherries: on a dwarfed tree, a net laid as ripeness approaches settles the matter.

Propagation

The dessert cherry does not come true from seed: a stone will give a wild cherry with often mediocre fruit. Serious propagation goes through grafting onto a chosen rootstock, which determines both the variety of the fruit and the vigour of the tree.

For a small garden, everything is decided there: ask the nursery for a variety grafted onto a dwarfing rootstock of the Gisela type. The tree stays at human height, comes into bearing faster, and above all you can cover it with a net against the birds without scaffolding. Home grafting, by budding in summer or by cleft in spring, remains possible but takes a little practice.

Month-by-month care calendar

Green Hub tips

• Always prune in the green, just after the harvest in summer. A pruning wound in the damp winter is the open door to canker and silver leaf disease.
• In a small garden, choose a dwarfing rootstock of the Gisela type: tree at human height, harvest without a ladder and anti-bird net easy to lay.
• Check at purchase whether the variety is self-fertile or whether it needs a neighbouring pollinator, otherwise you will have flowers but few cherries.
• Favour an early variety: harvested early, it largely escapes the cherry fruit fly whose egg-laying starts later.
• The stones and the leaves contain cyanogenic compounds: the flesh is eaten without worry, but you never bite into the stones.