Not sure how easy it is to see, but this is what I have to do every year when I plant. The netting stays on until the plants are big enough to survive having leaves or branches snipped off. Though once they're that big, the birds seem to leave everything alone. Granted, I'm fortunate I'm only dealing with birds. If this were rabbits, gophers or mice, that would seriously suck. Don't know how effective just netting would be against something with arms.

I would guess it's the dreaded Brown Rot. Once that starts it moves rather quickly. I had it a few years ago and some of the experts here on GW pointed me to a product called Monterey Fungi Fighter. I was unable to locate that locally (in a very short time that I had to get it applied) so I found a product from Bonide called Infuse that had the same active ingredient. It worked just like they said it would! I want to say it was Harvestman or Fruitnut who had guided me on this one, but they had said you can even use it in a rescue operation. In other words, if you have spotted early signs of Brown Rot you can spray with MFF (or in my case Infuse) and it'll stop the BR and you'll have saved some of the crop anyway. It worked for me. Going forward from that experience, I was much more diligent in making sure I collected and discarded any of the "Mummies" (the shriveled up fruit with the nasty moldy looking spore things, etc) as well a keeping things really clean under the tree. And then being diligent in a spray schedule with regard to applying a Fungicide. Now when I harvest my cherries, one of the last things I do after picking for the day is to go around the underneath of the tree and pick up all the drops or bird pecked ones that I discard so that there's nothing under my tree except for grass. Even if I'm dog tired after a day of harvesting I find the energy to get the drops off the ground and thrown away. I think it really helps. Others may have a different take on your cherry problem, but if it is BR the products noted and keeping a clean area may help out going forward. This post was edited by iowajer on Mon, May 26, 14 at 9:08

Belinda's Dream balled for me since we had a miserably wet and dreary May. Red Eden is still to be determined, but I think Red Eden will actually open even though I've read about other people having balling issues. It's phenomenal how long it takes Red Eden to bloom though haha. These buds were photographed on May 1st....they still have not opened though as of May 27th and I'd estimate they have another week or so to go. The blooms take MORE than a month to develop and bloom, but repay for their effort by giving blooms that last for 3+ weeks before I have to manually cut them off because they will start to get a little brown. From 5-1-2010

I am soooo confused. Exactly what is a sport? A sport is a spontaneous genetic mutation that has some quality distinctively different from the original. For example, someone in Chicago spotted a flower on their 'Peace' rose that was dramatically different in color than the original--that person rooted that bit of the plant, named the variant 'Chicago Peace' and it is in commerce today. Another mutation besides flower color would be growth habit--an example of a climbing sport would be 'Climbing Peace', which has the same flowers as the original 'Peace', but which has longer, "climbing" canes.