Newbie: What you are describing is not normal ripening for sweet cherries. There is something else going on, probably a fungal infection of some type. Every year is different, and diseases can come and go from year to year. But if this happens to your cherry tree two or three years in a row, you may have to look into dormant spraying with something like copper, or early-season sprays with a fungicide to protect your cherries. I would start by dormant spraying the tree this winter, just as a precaution. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Potted trees are lots of work and don't think I'll go that route... yet We had a longer cold winter then last year...about the same low temp. of around minus 32C which is the critical temp. for flower buds to die off. More fruiting buds died off then last year. On the Lapin I have a double leader...one completely died back, the other is alive all the way up with all fruiting buds dead, only some lower branches have some fruit on. The other trees are all green to the top but most of the fruiting buds got winter killed also.

You say "large" plastic containers. How "large" specifically and what variety? The typical cherry tomato plant gets huge and to thrive it would need a container the size of a half whiskey barrel. Your plants may just be root bound and so dying off since they have out-grown their containers. Dave

"subgenus" may be more appropriate (or maybe not, taxonomists have put both sweet and sour cherries into the subgenus Cerasus). All these different cherry species are very closely related, if one wants to consider them different species. This is one example where the line separating different species is not a clear one. It could even be possible to consider the different cherry families as subspecies. After all, if they can freely interbreed and hybridize with each other, can they not be considered members within the same species? (by this definition we could divide all cherries into only 2 groups: those with 16 chromosomes and those with 32) Or one could attempt to divide cherries into different families: Sweet cherries (P. avium), sour cherries, Black cherries plus Capulin native to the American continent (put into same group), and Asian flowering cherries. Perhaps better classification could be provided if taxonomists utilized multiple degrees of species relatedness/separation, because it is ambiguous whether some of the different cherries should be classified as entirely separate species or subspecies within a singular species, neither of which would be wholly accurate.