Maybe you should amend the soil and mulch. I know you were talking about throwing good money after bad, but amending the soil will be useful if you ever pull those trees out and mulch will either be plastic and last you many seasons or you will put some organics down and when it decays you will have a higher humus content in your soil and it will hold onto the water better. Hell you could even work some of that cross linked polyacrilamide gel into the soil to hold onto the water really well, I would imagine that it would be worth your time to get a little auger and drill 50-100 10" deep holes and add the granules to them if it meant less time watering. Mycorrhizal fungi might also be of some help since mostly what they are good for is increasing a plants drought tolerance by expanding the reach of the root system.

bf: I haven't tried the Krymsk 5 or 6. Have tried Krymsk 1 which is supposed to be dwarfing for peach, plum, and apricot. I'm not impressed at all. Very large gnarled overgrowth on peach and apricot. Only thing it seems fairly compatible with is plum/pluot. Fruit is much smaller than on Citation. For cherry I have Mazzard, Gisela 5,6,&12, GM 61/1, and Maxium 14. Very unimpressed with any Gisela. They all grew rapidly for a yr or two then completely stopped. I'm cutting them all down. Only Mazzard has made enough growth. I'm thinking about try Mahelab as a last resort. It is supposed to have some resistance to crown gall, which I need, and may bear earlier than Mazzard. Have about $500 of cherry trees I'll sell very cheap!! The Fruitnut

I have read that in this instance that people can do two grafts. The native variety being the most hardy and strongest rooting, then a short intermediary piece which can bridge between the native and fruiting varieties. Can anyone assist? Or know someone who can? I have cut down a large native cherry and would like to graft lapins and stella to the sprouts which are sure to come up this spring. "example taken from plum/almond stone fruit grafting" - " Also (and this is where the fun starts) most fruit trees in the Prunus genus are sometimes compatible with each other: almonds, apricots, nectarines, peaches, and plums all are compatible for grafting, but occasionally it's complicated. For example, some plum rootstock is not compatible with peaches or nectarines; and some almonds require an intermediate step before grafting onto some plum rootstocks."

Anybody have any luck with this yet?