Jas,

Stella should be a good pollinator for Bing. You just have to wait until your tree decides to flower that's all. My Rainer pollinates my Bing.

Tony

I agree the Stella should do a fine job pollinating your Bing cherry tree as both are sweet cherries. The Meteor is a sour cherry and won't help at all, the good news is that it is a self pollinating sour cherry so should do fine all on its own! Be patient with the sweet cherries if you can survive frosts, pests, diseases, you should have cherries in a few years. Took my sweet cherries well over 7-8 years before I started getting blooms and fruit.

My sweet cherries on Gisela 5 and DWN dwarf rootstock start bearing the 3rd leaf. Van even a few the 2nd leaf. By the 4th leaf the whole tree blooms. The downside is that precocious and heavy setting varieties like Van on these rootstocks can overset as early as that 4th leaf. I've seen them where the limbs were a solid mass of fruit. You couldn't get to the stems to pick. Just had to grab hands full to bust a way in. Not on my trees but in CA.

Just like Fruitnut says, rootstock plays a role in it, too.

Both of my Black Gold and Vandalay flowered and set a few fruit in their 2nd year. The flowering and fruit setting has increased each year. Mine are on Gisela 5 rootstock from Raintree.

This year is an exception due to the extremely cold winter. Vandalay, which flowered early, flowered more but hardly set any fruit. Black Gold flowered 7-10 days later and set a lot of fruit.

You don't need to wait 7-8 years if your cherry tree is on a certain rootstock and you have appropriate cross pollination varieties (both of my are self-fertile anyway).

Pollination of sweet cherries is tricky. Raintree says Stella is not a good pollinator for Bing so I would look into that some more. The rules for what can pollinate what sweet cherry are complex and I don't remember them now, but sweet cherries are in different pollination groups and I believe you need a cherry in a different group if you want cross pollination.

Scott

This chart should help.

When I was young and picked cherries to earn extra money Black Tartarian was the pollenizer of choice for Bing around the Stockton/Lodi California area.

My trees are on dwarfing rootstocks (Krymsk, Gisela, Zaiger) but if I had the room I'd use fullsize rootstocks. I think it takes less work to achieve high quality fruit.

gary

This post was edited by Waiting on Tue, Jun 3, 14 at 1:41

http://homeguides.sfgate.com/good-pollinators-bing-cherry-trees-57515.html

Hoosier, my point is I found conflicting information. The problem is that pollination data is not very accurate as it is hard to test. Also many people don't understand that for cherries it is more than bloom timing that matters for pollination.

At some point I found this guide that listed the different groups that cherries fall under but I can't seem to find it now. Well, here is one without a lot of data, see below.

Oh, here is a link that says Stella may not work for Bing in some areas: link.

Pollination compatibility for most fruits is fairly simple, but not for sweet cherries.

For the original poster, I would say there is a good chance the Stella will work, or there is a wild or flowering cherry in the area that will do the job. But, it is not certain.

Scott

Here is a link that might be useful: cherry groups

It doesn't matter what pollinizing variety is put out there, if the tree is not flowering, it will not set fruit. After five years, there should be some flowers. Mazzard takes the longest to set a good crop but even with Mazzard I would expect to see at least a small crop in the fifth year. I have fifth leaf cherries on Mazzard and while they are not yet full producing, they set some fruit. Not sure why your tree is not flowering.

Bing x Stella = no

Here is a link that might be useful: pollination chart

Further searching found that Stella is ok for Bing, except in "mild climates", which I suspect Zone 5 is not.

This post was edited by Waiting on Tue, Jun 3, 14 at 18:42