Konrad, I sent an email to grandpas orchard last night. The agreement last fall (once I discovered they shipped my cherry trees in november) was that if the trees die they would replace them. I hope they honor it. Although considering that their current cherry stock is bare now I am asking for full refund. I just do not want to sit and wait until next spring to plant my cherry trees. I would rather order from different place but this spring. Beeone.. that is too bad. So how do you guys recognize winterkill? Is it just tat trees do not flower? I am not a pro so I had my dad to check out my cherry trees. He said all the buds are dry and black and crumble in his fingers, so they trees are definetly dead. He is confident. However I keep reading about 'winterkill' on this forum and how some of you guys have trees coming back afterwords from low buds right above the graft. So is it possible then the tree is possibly coming back ? If so - how soon would I see any growth? I am running against the clock. If I do not claim replacement by June 1 I get none.

I'm thinking bacterial canker. If so, there is no "cure". You can lessen its impact by doing things that improve the tree's health -- basically reducing any stresses on the tree -- and that will lessen the impact of the canker. Your title indicates you are in zone 5... if so, that is borderline or worse for sweet cherries, and that could itself be a major cause of stress that allows bacterial canker to invade. You might want to look at a tart (pie) cherry, which are hardy to zone 4 or even zone 3. There are some new "bush" cherries (8' tall bushes) coming out of a 50-year breeding program in Saskatchewan, Canada that have tart-cherry acidity but have sugar levels comparable to sweet cherries, and are hardy to zone 2.

Good morning, i am sorry to revive such an old thread. I am new to fruit trees, in canadian zone 5b ish. (Its my inderstanding that the official calculation method for zone hardiness differs between canada and USA so i wonder if I should assume i actually am in zone 4b) I hope those who tried sweet cherry in z5 or z4 got some success! I am commenting because I found this publication, in french, of Quebec fruit "production" of cherry and peach. The book is titled "Les fruits du quebec, histoire et traditions des douceurs de la table" from Paul-Louis Martin. Starting page 167 on, he mentions some sour and some sweet cherry varieties that where seemingly commercially grown around here at the time (Village of Abbotsford is zone 4b/5a for example) circa 1800. Since I am not an expert, I might be reading this wrong as he switches from sour to sweet varieties names between paragraphs. (Grillote, Cerise de France, cerise commune et cerise franche are some of the denominations I read, without knowing to which group they belong to, except for Grillote which is montmorency type.) There are some phrases like "Many years ago, a black sweet cherry with a delicious flavor grew largely about Montreal". Later, there is mention of varieties such as May Duke and Black Eagle that grew as cold as Saint-Denis-De-Kamouraska Z4. Here is a link to the google book Les fruits du Quebec Histoire et traditions des douceurs de la table. I dont know it it can be of any help to anyone. Here is a list of varieties, maybe someone knows them and can say what they are and if they could be of interest (1790): May Duke (sour) Morello (sour) Early Black Black Heart Kentish I too am looking for hardy varieties. On my side I see some green on my sweet varieties but I dont think i'm getting much fruit this year, as when I dissected buds in March with razor blades, most had some brown in the center. Thank you for all the great information you provide!

Thank you alcan! I'll have to look into this.