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:

Cherries vary one kind to another on resistance. In our area research at Mt Vernon WA has listed recommended ones more well suited. I went for that which is why I had long ago went with Surefire and the sweet cherry Early Burlat. Over the years my Burlat had been as disease free as the Japanese types of flowering cherries (shirofugen, prunus osima zakura etc.) And superior to others in my neighborhood. One main problem is the flowers bloom to early on the hill heights area in Vancouver WA (above Portland) and even though the bloom is rain resistant the bees are not pollinating during poor conditions and thus little fruit. I must hand pollinate. Other than the above remedy of selecting the right ones and about later bee friendly blooming ones you could try the idea of hand pollinating. I always set fruit on Burlat from Van cherry from my little greenhouse. In your case a Burlat flower from one you could graft to CJ tree could be dried indoors, possibly store it in fridge for a few days, and applied to CJ flowers. Even though nothing that I know of can be found to spray on to prevent infections you can still "wait and see". By that I mean to get your tree to over about 5 years of age because age 2-4 is the most prone years according to tests done West of the Cascades in Oregon.

OK, I will throw in my $0.02. Yes, get the peach trees. Buy a dwarf so you can reach around the tree more easily. A full sized tree will be bigger than you want to deal with. What the others have said about removing fruit is a very real issue with a peach. If you don't do that you get TONS of too small fruit. Thin the fruits and you get much better results. One warning. If you don't pick the peaches, but let them fall off the tree and rot, you'll have more yellow jackets under that tree than you ever knew existed. Growing up outside of Philadelphia the next door neighbors had two full sized peach trees in their front yard which they never thinned and rarely picked. In August it was unsafe to walk in their front yard because of all the yellow jackets feasting upon the rotting fruit under those trees. Peaches and cherries are both in the genus "Prunus". The plants in that genus are subject to lots of pests (The plants don't devote many resources to protecting themselves. Instead they devote lots of resources to making fruit, so this is just the way things are and you have to reconcile yourself to this if you want to grow your own.) Sweet cherries and sour ("pie") cherries are two different species of "Prunus". Sweet cherries (mostly, with a couple of exceptions) require two different varieties near each other in order to make fruit because they (mostly) won't self-pollinate. None of that is true of sour cherries. One sour cherry tree standing by itself will make fruit. By & large sweet cherries are big trees. If you don't by a grafted, dwarf sweet cherry you'll someday have a tree that will be 20'-30' tall if it's happy. That's not so true of pie cherries, which are often naturally small trees (Of course, you may find that even one sour cherry produces more fruit than you want to deal with. That will depend upon your interest in cooking. Cherries are only ripe for a very short season, so you have to make sure you have time to do something with the cherries when the tree is ripe. Otherwise you've missed the point for a whole year. Both species of cherries also have a lot of pests, although probably not quite as many as peaches have. Oh! One final thought regarding cherries. THE BIRDS ARE FIENDS FOR CHERRIES! They usually eat the fruit while it's ripening, but before it's fully ripe, so you have to contend with the birds, too. Not all birds of course, but the fruit eating ones, eg., robins, starlings, mockingbirds, and catbirds. Don't buy those owl decoys. Waste of money. You'll probably soon decide that the only real way to keep some of the cherries for yourself is to cover the tree with netting just before the cherries start getting color. This is yet another BIG reason for making sure you buy a dwarf cherry! (As I said, the most commonly available pie cherries are naturally small, but if you want sweet cherries you will have to buy a dwarfed tree. You may only be able to find "semi-dwarf" sweet cherries. Even so, they will be smaller trees than the full sized ones will be. I've also read before that for sweet cherries, the birds are less interested in the "yellow" varities (like Rainier) than they are in the red ones. I have no personal experience with that.)

You should cut a couple of inches of the branches that have no leaves. Check to see if the cut areas have green cambium. If they are dry, brown, those are dead. You should trim them off and follow Konrad's advice on how to grow a new central lead for this tree. iyour tree probably on a dwarf rootstock. But usually even a dwarf chery rootstock, a tree could grow to 12-15 ft. Not sure how good is your soil.