I've been doing a field test trial of low chill cherries in SoCal climate zone 10. I know many of you may have been thinking about cherries but have been told you can't do it in your climate. Cherries are probably the most difficult out of the stone fruit to do here, they're less adaptable to low chill winter conditions and don't take the blazing hot summer sun well.

There are a few people with peach trees here but half the time the peach tree seems to die or looks sickly with wrinkled bark and half brown leaves. I suspect this is from lack of being watered. I've never seen a peach tree with a lot of fruit on it. Usually it seems there's four or five peaches in a tree that's 9 feet tall. I'm pretty sure all the peach trees sold around here are Babcock.

Back to cherries. There were 2 Royal Lee, 2 Royal Minnie, a Bing with a graft of Royal Minnie in it, 1 Lapins, and just for fun 4 flowering cherries, 2 tiny Kanzan, one Yoshino, and a large grafted Kanzan.

The growth on the Bing has been surprisingly vigorous. The first year it was very late and reluctant to break dormancy, but now that it's more established, seems to be doing fine (this was before the Royal Minnie got grafted in). In fact, the Bing seems to be growing as vigorous now as the new branch that got grafted in. This year four cherries appeared on the Royal Minnie graft. They weren't very big, and it was apparent the tree didn't seem to have much energy to go into the formation of the fruits, but they turned red and were reasonably ripe.

Both Royal Minnie trees definitely seem more vigorous than the Royal Lee trees. The one in a pot under the shade of a tree (this one on dwarf rootstock) produced about 9 under formed fruits, while the one up against the south side of the house in full sun did not have any fruit at all. No fruit from either Royal Lee yet, it's been 3 years since they've been in the ground. They all have blossoms though, and it seems the bloom times overlap. The Rainier bloomed profusely, but seems to have since died this year, perhaps because it was in a container and did not get enough water over the summer. The first Lapins I had died, perhaps the graft wasn't good, and it didn't get enough water. And then the main trunk got snapped, so I'm sure that put stress on it too (even after I set it right). It seemed to slowly decline after that. The second Lapins seems to have fewer and fewer leaves every time I go check on it, but all the leaves do seem green and lush. Doesn't seem to be very vigorous, but it's only been in the ground for 8 months.

The big grafted Kanzan died, but the 3 other flowering cherries that were all planted as little seedlings (own-root I'm assuming) are all doing okay. This is notable because supposedly Yoshino requires 500 chill hours (we only have about 100). Yet the tiny little tree did produce 5 beautiful blossoms. The leaves are very tiny, and the tips are all brown, but it does seem to be growing. I try to make sure it gets consistently watered, especially during the Summer.

In general, what I've noticed about the cherries, they seem to do better with just a little bit of partial shade, and struggle in full sun. The leaves look more lush when they're not planted out in the open, better to be closely surrounded by other plants, to help hold humidity, provide protection from wind, and to help shade out the hot sun.