new cherry tree - advice or tips

[Garden Girl Jo]

My husband just bought me a cherry tree. It is an adorable little thing. I have been wanting a fruit tree for a long time and this is the first one!
It is a 'montmorency' prunus cerasus

It seems to be doing well so far. As I am new to fruit bearing trees if anyone has any advice/tips/general info they'd like to share on cherry trees I'd be glad to hear it. I'd also be glad to see any photos anyone wants to share of mature cherry trees!
Thanks!

[opabinia51]

Here are some tips on making your tree nice and healthy and this will also give you cherries with a tonne of flavour.


Anyway, here you go:

Work lots of good compost and composted manure into the soil aroun the tree. Do not put any compost un against the bark of the tree, leave a few inches.

Each fall mulch the leaves from your tree along with any maple or other leave from your yard or neighourhood (don't use walnut leaves) and do the same with them. Spread some manure over the leaves.

Keep your tree watered over the summer and early fall until the fall rains set in. Many trees are planted each year in the summer (which technically is the worst time to plant a tree) and left to shrivel up and die. But, this does not mean that you should water every day without looking at the soil. Stick your finger in the soil and see how damp it is. Then, if the soil is drying out, give the tree and nice long soak for about an hour. This is called deep watering and it will also allow the roots of your tree to grow deep into the soil in search of water and nutrients.

Rock phosphate is an excellant product that you can sprinkle around the drip line (below the outermost reach of the leaves) of the tree.


https://www.cfaitc.org/Commodity/pdf/Potassium.pdf

[TheLorax]

I'm losing all of my cherries over here compliments of an irresponsible neighbor who has diseased trees that he doesn't take care of so I can't post any photos for you or I would. My cherries were doing great until he bought one lousy ornamental cherry that was infested with black knot fungus and he didn't prune out and burn any of the diseased branches.

To opabinia51's suggestions, I'd like to add that a good 3" layer of hardwood mulch around the base of the tree might be nice.

What I can tell you is that mine always fruited well because I planted the appropriate pollinators. Most of mine were sweet cherries that were not self fruitful so they had to have a cross pollinator present. For 'Montmorency', you don't need a pollinator because it's self fruitful but fruit set seemed to be better when I added another sour cherry that bloomed around the same time.

Decent explainer here-
https://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/A/ANR-0053-E/

Have fun! I love fruiting trees and shrubs.

[Garden Girl Jo]

Opabinia51 - thanks so much for all your information & tips. I appeciate you taking the time to share what you did! I found it very helpful!

TheLorax - thanks also for your additional tip. So sorry to hear that your neighbors negligence resulted in such devestation for you!

Thanks again for taking the time to respond.