Jollyrd: Watch your tree's growth to gauge whether you need to fertilize. If you are getting very little new growth each year (like a couple inches or less) and water or disease aren't the reasons, then you could add some fertilizer. However, if you have decent soil and have mulched, you really shouldn't need any fertilizer. I rarely fertilize my cherries, maybe once every 5 to 10 years is all and that is because I get paranoid that they could be doing more and throw some fertilizer on them. It has never made a difference. Hoosier: Most if not all pie cherries are self fruitful, so you only need one tree. I have both a Northstar and an Evans/Bali tree. I have developed a strong preference for the Evans cherry. It is late to ripen, mid August for me, while the Northstar ripens in July and my Early Richmond cherries ripen in late June/early July. I really like the Evans for a number of reasons. It sets fruit prolifically. Last year I got about 25 lbs. from the one tree, which is just over 6 feet tall, and because it has so much fruit close together, picking is very efficient. It just seems to be absolutely loaded with cherries every year. The Evans also has a sweeter cherry than the Northstar, and the cherries are quite a bit larger. The one drawback I've found to the Evans is that the cherries are slightly astringent to my taste until they are dead ripe when it goes away. That means that while they turn bright red about the first of August, I net them and wait a couple weeks before picking. I'm sure this also helps increase the sugar content. When fully ripe, they have a wonderful cherry flavor, and if dried, are really very sweet. Perhaps someone in a more disease prone area can add their experience with Evans regarding diseases such as brown rot. I understand from others on this forum that brown rot hits later maturing fruits much more than early ones, so the later ripening of the Evans might make it more prone to brown rot if it is a problem in your area. The attached link is a picture I took of the Evans 2 years ago. Here is a link that might be useful:

I think your right Myk. I have a tart cherry planted in 2004, fruiting for the first time this year. The tree has a story. It was a seedling dug up and replanted here by my father-in-law in 2004. Around 2007, I decided a seedling probably wouldn't be very good fruit, so I decided to re-graft it. I cut it back to 1' high and put several chip grafts on it. The chip grafts that took started producing flowers! Now I know that cherries produce flowers on two year old wood, but am positive I did not graft two year old wood. I pulled the flowers off and let the rootstock grow out. This year it finally fruited from the rootstock. I was hoping the fruit would be worthless so I could cut the tree down and replace it with a peach. The tree gets mildew unless I spray it, so I was looking any excuse to get rid of it. Unfortunately, it looks like I may have to keep it. The birds are savaging it just as the cherries start to put on some blush. As you know, birds seem to go after the best tasting fruits, which wasn't a good sign, since I wanted any excuse to get rid of this tree. So I tasted one today that was just starting to put on blush. It was sweeter than the neighbor's Montmorency trees when they are at full red. How depressing. This tree is a pain in the rear to spray for mildew, I was so looking forward to getting rid of it. I had to net the thing, while in the meantime looking across the way to my neighbor's two Montmorencies loaded with red berries. These freakin' birds are too smart.

Same thing here. Last year I sprayed apples, plum and nectarine with Imidan, and it pretty much wiped out the curculio. I had no damage on my cherries and did not need to spray them. This year I switched to Surround and did not spray my cherries, and my North Star cherry was heavily attacked; my Montmorency was only attacked to a small degree. I think one conclusion we might draw is that of cherries, curculio are partial to North Star.

3 of em. I'd say 90% have the brown spots (actually cavities on magnification) and 50% have white bumpy humps. All reddening up now a bit.