Hi Kubotabx2200, Thank so much for your suggestion. I have been debating a lot between NorthStar and Montmorency. Its not an easy decision for me. I love the look of dark red cherries. And they say NorthStar bears heavily too. And it stays a small tree. But since I already have two red cherries, my husband is pushing to get the dwarf Montmorency. Besides, my neighbor has a standard Montmorency (I am certain its a Montmorency, he does not know) and the birds and squirrels don't eat the fruit and they are tasty when cooked. Can you describe the flavor of NorthStar to me if you a little time? Yeshwant, I got my Surefire from Raintree and I planted it in 2004. It is a small tree no doubt. Now its just about 6 feet or so and upright. Last year it had flowers but set only a few fruit that fell off. This year it had many clusters of flowers and all of them have turned to baby fruit. I have big hopes for this tree(!) I don't have a picture of the tree in bloom but I could still take a picture now. But for the life of me I can't figure out how to post a picture into a message? So the answer is I think you will have to wait 2-3 years for good fruit on the Gisella 5 rootstock that Raintree sold it on. I live around Riverdale. Some parts of my yard does seem like 7a but some parts are definitely colder. The trouble with Starkbros is not that they sell you poor trees but that they don't tell you what the rootstock is so I don't have some important information. But I still did get some trees from Starkbros in the past and I ordered dwarfs only. However some of my trees turned out not to be dwarfs, they are huge. So I find them hit-or-miss. I think your Suerfire will grow quite a bit more, specially this year but it won't be a big tree. If I figure out how post pictures I will share. Katyajini

Rob, our Evans cherries produce huge amounts of large fruit and we are not that far away from you. Likely your Evans are seedlings. We have 3 problems with Evans, Brown rot due to the size of the clusters, Blossom blast in wet years ( bacterial canker wiping out the blossoms), and the jam they make is very light in color, pinkish, so we mix in darker cherries to get redder color. If you would like to try grafting some of our Evans onto your rootstock you can come and get some this winter. We have grafted Balaton, Meteor, and Sure Fire onto Evans trees, and while the graft unions swell and look bad, the trees grow to good size and produce well. What I have been doing when top grafting larger branches is putting a pencil sized scion into a "t" graft on the top surface of the branch, heavily cutting back the rest of the foliage on the branch (but leave some), and letting it grow and get vigorous for a year before cutting the main branch above the graft. This lessens the amount of time the wood is open before it heals over. Painting the stub with copper then applying bees wax from a toilet ring (very sticky) seems to seal it from everything except canker, but I do not have scientific evidence this really helps.

I’m very late to this as the initial comment was made in 2007. But it literally just occurred couple hours ago and I need somewhere to vent. We were walking up my driveway when I heard a thud from our large oak tree. It sounded like a branch crashing. We were sickened to see a squirrel laying there. His eyes were moving, so my gf and I who are big animal lovers called the nearest vet who takes wildlife and they said for us to try and capture it. Suddenly while on the phone to our shock & delight the squirrel jumped up and ran up the tree only to fall a second time. I can’t describe to you how sick I felt watching This now for a second time. The poor thing My heart sunk and still does as I write this. And we blame ourselves for maybe startling it back up, although who’s to know what he would have done. It got up once again, tho this time not as agile and ran behind a play house we had built for our kids wgen they were little. It must have fell 20 plus feet. We tried gently coaxing it into a box and than a cat carrier with an hour gone by to no avail As it limped in fear away from us. We decided at this point we were perhaps doing more harm than good & finally left the box with a blanket, hoping maybe it would rest inside for it’s final moments. I checked just now & it has passed. My prayer is that it went quickly without any further harm. This was such a horrible thing to witness as an animal lover for both of us. You feel helpless and at the same time our efforts were in vain. I wish there was some type of wildlife rescue in my area for such things. But we’re lucky that there’s even a vet who’s willing to see them, providing you can catch them. I don’t share this to dishearten anyone, but wanted to share so anyone who may read this will know there not alone in such things. And the only thing you can do is your best to try and save it. In the end it’s in God’s hands. Peace and love

What shape is the bud? Herbaceous buds are normally a slightly flattened ball shape while tree peony buds are usually more of a teardrop shape. The branching of your stems looks tree peony to me but the leaves look herbaceous, sorry, hopefully someone with more tp experience will offer a more informed opinion! One thing I'm pretty sure of, if you don't have different looking/colored leaves that are easily identifiable as unique from the rest you have one or the other--either the tree peony failed or the herbaceous did not sprout. If it is herbaceous I'm afraid it's probably too late to save the tree peony. If that's the case and you decide to get another (Mother's Day is coming up fast!) make sure you plant it much deeper than a herbaceous peony, if you can see the graft it should be several inches below ground.