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Gardening in Canada

Bing cherry tree transplanting

16 years ago

My neighbor who offered me the lilac bushs yesterday has now offered me some bing cherry tree suckers!!!

They are about 2ft tall and pretty leafy, her uncle is the one who gave her the one that is in her backyard so she was going to ask him how to get the suckers out for me, but I'm wondering what I should do once I get them!

My plan is our house is beside town property and I wanted to put a "hedge" in the front yard. So I thought I could have 2 trees at either end and the lilacs in the middle? The yard is probably 90-100ft long.

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Comments (3)

will_2006
16 years ago
wow this is a good one for thought. First I would worn you that the suckers may not be the Bing Cherry that you see. The reason for this is that the tree is probably a graft and the suckers are from the parent root. not the same plant or type usually. This has become already the wrong time of year to do this. I would suggest digging the Suckers, and planting them in October, if you live in southern Alberta if not late September. Here in southeastern Ontario I would say late October early November.

Your Idea is a wonderful one for planting, However I would suggest keep the trees away from the road as they do not like the road salt at all. In the spring with the Cherries and Lilacs in bloom you would be the talk of the street for sure.

well I ramble on, but enjoy and good luck. Say hi to all in Alberta
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wildie
Original Author
16 years ago
my hubby put his foot down and said no more digging this year. So we are going to do it in spring!
In town here you have to keep 3ft from the street clear, so the salt won't be a problem.
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Jessaka, cherry trees can get brown rot, but since they fruit early in the year they are not as prone to it as are peaches and plums. You do need two varieties for pollination. 50' or less apart. The big problems on cherries are fruit cracking, bird stealing, leaf diseases and pests, and bacterial canker. Cherry fruit fly can also be a problem. For your Bing the main problem is cracking, it is highly prone. Very few people grow Bing in the east and that is probably the main reason. Adams County Nursery, the main commercial nursery on the east coast, doesn't even sell Bing for example. So I would consider removing the Bing and getting two other varieties instead. I made the same mistake as you did, starting off with a Bing. I know how to graft so I topworked it. The real deal-breaker problem on cherries is bacterial canker. It will kill the tree. I have so far been lucky, my trees have gotten cankers several times but I have cut out the cankered limbs and saved the tree every time. For the leaf diseases cherries are not used to heat so the leaves get unhappy. I have my cherries planted in part shade to decrease their heat intake. Overall sweet cherries are somewhat hard to justify growing, they don't taste any better than a good grocery store cherry either (very much unlike peaches and plums which are a million times better tree-ripened in the backyard). Scott
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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
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Cherries come in pollination groups so any cherry outside the Bing group will work. See chart below for some more cherries that will pollinate a Bing. Note that Bing is not a very good cherry for Illinois since it often cracks, so I would focus on getting one that cracks less for your second cherry. Scott Here is a link that might be useful: see charts in this pdf
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The sweet cherry cultivars (P. avium) generally only attract the small and indescript moth species (Geometrids, Noctuids, Tortricids, etc) and a couple of the peach borers (Sesiidae), so it really is not a good choice for a lepidopteran host plant unless you want to do those families of moths. That said I know P. avium has been used to foster the larva of a couple of the silkmoth species, but I believe it is hard to get them to switch to it. A much better choice would be one of the sour cherry cultivars (P. cerasus) which is readily accepted by quite a few species of NA butterflies as well as many of our showy moth species. The old "cherry" standby Prunus serotina is always a great choice too. HTH, Larry
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Judy_B_ON
16 years ago
With regard to the hedge idea. You will need more than one lilac and two trees to cover 100 ft. Eventually the shade from the trees may inhibit the lilac.

Check with your city as to what maximum height is allowed for a front yard hedge. In many cities, no more than 4-6 ft is allowed due to concerns about traffic sight lines. You will have a constant pruning job keeping lilacs to that limit.
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