Just your standard ol' run of the mill gritty mix will work very well on Prunus. I would just apply FP 9-3-6 (or MG 24-9-16/12-4-8) weekly or bi-weekly. Consistent applications of fertilizer that assure fairly even and favorable levels are fine - mother nature doesn't turn the nutrient supply on and off - except to the degree that soil life activity slows markedly as soil temps fall below 55*. Take not of that and withhold fertilizers at those low temps - especially urea-based fertilizers. Al

Picture would help,.. new growth should give you new buds for new branches, you might have cut them off.

Iseltzer: We have jap beatles all around me yet luckily so far, they are not in big numbers where I am at. 30 miles away they are horrendous so I suppose some day they will be a problem for me. I grow grapes too so I hope they stay away. When they come, I will try carbaryl since I heard it is supposed to work great on jap beatles. I grow tart cherries too and find I must net at the first sign of pink on the fruits. If you wait a few days longer, it will be amazing how much of the crop just vanishes to birds. Even with a net I got one crafty robin who always walked around the tree every morning and finally found some way in. Very hard to remove the birds once inside the netting. Thankfully I only had that happen twice. Never did find any opening how it got in. My biggest pest with cherries is birds. I do spray for curculio, cherry fruit fly, cherry leaf spot (if and when it happens). I do not spray once the tree is netted so I have had an outbreak or two of powdery mildew if we get very cloudy and rainy weather for a long period at this stage but it was only bad once and more so on some varieties than others. Cuculio season here runs potentially from petal fall to about mid-June. Just before I net, I like to spray one last time at the first sign of pink on any fruit and that seems to do the trick for me (only found one larvae in all the fruit I picked and pitted over the years). If I get leafspot, I will spray chlorothalonil AFTER harvest as not cleared for cherries after shuck-split stage in spring. Not a huge issue so far except for one year and again definite differences in susceptibility based on variety. Most of this pertains to my tart cherries since I have only tried growing sweets the past few years. I do not think they will be much different that the tarts as far as birds,insects and disease issues except that I avoid using Imidan insecticide on the sweets due to phytotoxicity.

Only if they bloom at the same time. Most pollination charts show Rainier as an early to midseason blooming variety while all the tart or pie cherry varieties are listed as late blooming. Depending on location and climate, these bloom seasons may have a lot of overlap so it is certainly possible. All pie cherries are self fertile so should make good pollination partners for sweet cherries with compatible bloom times.