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Fruit & Orchards

Pollinator for Black Tartarian (Sweet) Cherry

17 years ago

After much hunting, I have finally found a cherry tree for my back yard. The only trees I can purchase locally are Black Tartarian (sweet), Montmorency or Early Richmond. The later two are both sour. My husband likes sweet. He will be deployed with the Army for the next 77 weeks, so I want to get this baby growing while he is away. My problem is what to pollinate it with?

I have a pear and a plum growing back there already but I do not know if that will do it. Can I plant two black tartarians or can I pollinate a sweet with a sour? I hate to mail order another sweet bacause it will be so much younger than the one I bought locally. Any advice?

Thanks,

Christine

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Comments (5)

jellyman
17 years ago
Christine:

Mailorder another sweet. Without it, your Black Tartarian will not fruit. I would suggest something like Lapins or Black Gold. Stark Bros. has one called Royalton that looks ok, although heaven only knows what it really is.

Don't worry about the difference in age of the trees. If you plant a vigorous young bareroot tree, you will find it will catch up and pass the larger tree fairly quickly.

Sweet cherries are wonderful, but they are pretty hard to grow in the mid-Atlantic and Southeast U.S. of A. When your husband returns safe and sound in 77 weeks, I think he will be happy with the two sweet cherries you planted.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA
marijack_metrocast_net
17 years ago
I have a six year old Lapins. It survived two winters with a low temperature of -25 F., and a low wind chill of -55 F. These temperatures killed a Bing cherry and an Elberta peach. The Lapins fruit is delicious, medium sized and firm, so it has good shelf life. It forms blossoms around the junction of one and two year old wood, in large clusters. It is self fruitful and pollinates all other sweet cherries. It is a vigorous grower. Miller's Nursery in New York still has some. The tree may have problems, but I haven't found one yet.
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Didn't want Chills excellent logic to get lost in the drain cycle here. If you get a self-fruitful sweet cherry, you can't lose. It's like type O Blood. A universal donor. It will pollenize whatever you've got planted and itself, too, provided that the bloom times generally overlap. For the east coast, where sweet cherries are challenging anyway because of the summer humidity which causes cracking and other disease issues, there has been the suggestion that Lapins is a good choice (I'm in the high desert, so I'm only repeating what others have said.) For the record, on those occasions when Jellyman has childed me for something or other, my reaction is to feel kind of honored. Few are more knowledgable--not to mention, generous with their expertise--than Don and I am grateful for his participation here, curmudgeonliness (sp?) and all. Don
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Nurseries sometimes sell Lapins, a self fruitful variety, as self fertile Bing. Maybe that's what's going on here. If you get one self fertile to pollinate a non self fertile, they will both bear fruit in most cases. There may be a few cases where that won't work but most self fertiles pollinate most of the others if they bloom together.
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You are lucky to have had any cherries by now. Many people wait 4-5 yrs for their first fruit. If you remove the 3/1, you may have to wait yrs for any replacement to bloom. Keep the 3/1 and buy another tree. Bing is a very good pollinator for Rainier. It however is prone to split in rain, as is Rainier. A self fruitful variety like Sandra Rose, Sonata, Lapins, Skeena, or Sweetheart would be a good pollinator for Rainier, if they bloom together, and would not need another to pollinate itself. Bing and Rainier do bloom together. Sweetheart on a dwarfing rootstock like Giesla 5 blooms as fast as anything. It also matures later, which I think gets closer to your dry season. But it can overbear, giving small fruit of inferior guality. You solve that by severe pruning to remove fruit buds and force vegetative growth. The final size of your trees depends on how much you prune. The Fruitnut
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I have BT and Bing for x-pollination; both yield great. I planted them bare-root in 2007; they started bearing the first or second year and have at least doubled their yield each year. Which is good, given that in year 1 they had 3 and 6 cherries, respectively. :-) Ants (and earwigs; yuck) do attack the BT, and birds go after both; at first I used old onion bags as nets since most of the cherries were on the tips of branches, or in 'zones' over which I could cut open the bag and slide it down carefully and tie in place while the fruit ripen. May have to escalate to real nets next year, but I didn't know about pruning so now I have the BT, which is shooting for the moon, tied down in curves with ropes. I'm hoping it will curve the top branches, so I can prune the top shoots (there are four) and encourage more growth lower down. Anyway maybe I'll be able to actually get the net over the tree if all my gyrations over pruning and shaping work out. ;-) I had no bug attacks on the BT this year; maybe it's because we killed our lawn and it's very dry now. But we're in NoCal. Best of luck to you!
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geraldo
17 years ago
Well, here is one. The cherries develop in tight clusters and inside those clusters rot develops. It is hard to get the spray inside those clusters. Because of that Lapins is no longer planted commercially to any extent, at least to my knowledge. The Lapins is a good pollenizer if it blooms at the same time as your other variety, but Lapins is known as a somewhat early blooming variety. It can be more susceptible to frost than the late blooming varieties that are self fertile: Sonata, Sandra Rose or Benton. Overall, IMHO these are better varieties along with the Sweetheart, Skeena, Attika and Regina.
But those cherries may have other problems that will show in your location. Lapins is one of the best tasting cherries and if you have found it works well for you in your area, then you are really ahead of the game.
meomypete
16 years ago
18 years ago I planted a Black Tartarian with Montmorency and Norh Star to pollenate. I have yet to produce a sweet cherry. This winter I planted a Bing and Stalla hoping this will do the trick.
tami_2010
14 years ago
I planted a black tartarian cherry tree in spring 2007. I then planted a bing cherry tree near it last spring 2009. this is the first year that my tartarian cherry tree bloomed flowers. does that mean that it has been cross pollinated and will produce cherries this year.

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