I'm glad Acer asked the question. I had the same question before I found this forum last November. I asked a local "pro" and he told me any metal post such as fence post and it only had to stick out of the ground 4 feet like Applenut suggests. He said that the trunk is what needs the support, not any higher than 4 feet. So I went to Lowes and got a couple bundles of those 6 foot green painted fenceposts with the stablizer metal piece near the bottom. They were made in China, but there weren't any American made alternatives and I never considered the 20' copper pipe. Now I am hearing about lead based paint being used on children's toys made in China all over the news and I wonder if the green paint used to paint the posts have it and will it leach into the soil.... and you see where I am going. Think this is cause for concern?

Thanks. Great advice. This is another picture. Both pictures are from last year. The small early fruits this year still look fine (but they looked great last year at this time), and I used Daconil early this year when I put it on my peaches. The tree is beautiful with healthy foliage and loaded with fruit. The fruit has just all been ruined the past two years. I think it's too early in the game to shovel prune, but that may need to happen if I can't get smart enough to fix it. I'll try my best to identify the culprit and use the shotgun approach with fungicides in the mean time. Fruitnut says it could be stink bug hits introducing a disease, and that resonates. The lesions don't appear until late (when we have lots of stink bugs on our nearby BT cotton), and there are multiple lesions on the fruit in the first picture suggesting multiple hits. They coalesce later until the whole fruit is involved. Hemiptera pests stink in more ways than one! Thanks again, Jim Robbins

Iowajer: You do not need Orbit or Bumper or much of anything else to successfully grow tart cherries in Iowa. I am from Iowa so know the climate, and believe me Virginia is worse for just about every insect and disease. Yet I have grown tart cherries for 35 years with no problems -- except for the following: The normal lifespan of a tart cherry tree like Northstar or Meteor is about 20 years, give or take 5 years, but it is not age alone that kills them. It is the bacterial disease that develops with age that does it. I have had 2 Northstars, 2 Meteors, and 1 large Montmorency, all planted in 1979. The Northstars were finished before 20 years, one Meteor lasted 22 years, the Montmorency about the same, and the last Meteor was removed more recently at the ripe age of around 25 years. All of them were victims of bacterial disease and nothing else. All of the symptoms you describe can be attributed to one or another of the signs of bacterial disease. In advanced stages, the disease, which develops cankers on the limbs, eventually kills those limbs which should be cut off promptly. In the meantime, cherries become smaller, and often rot on the tree, though the trees will continue to produce. Leaves begin to look punky. At 15 years of age, and showing the symptoms you describe, your tree may have about 5 years of useful life left. None of the cocktail of chemicals you applied to your tree would have much, if any effect on bacterial disease, even expensive products like Orbit, and most particularly the useless combo sprays sold by Bonide. The best tactic against bacterial disease is to delay its onset, and that is done with one or two thorough dormant sprays of a copper product like Kocide that has some real copper strength. You should begin dormant spraying with copper while the trees are young, well before any evident signs of disease appear, just as you would with any stone fruit tree. With foresight, you may be able to hold off this disease for an additional 5-10 years, and you should apply dormant copper to your existing tree as well, although you are conducting a rearguard action that cannot cure the disease at this stage. Rather than putting a lot of money into expensive chemicals that will do your tree no good, I suggest you put the bucks into a new Northstar or Meteor tree that will be ready to take over when your existing tree checks out, as it surely will do. I planted a new Meteor 5 years ago when the handwriting was on the wall, and a new Montmorency this spring. The new Meteor is covered with fruit and ready this season to take over from the last old tree I removed. Both my climate and yours, BTW, are ideally suited to growing tart cherries. Some years I have had so many that I made 20 gallons of wine from pure juice. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Hard to say from the unknown size of the tree how much 1.5" is but going by my 3 year old trees I would say it will be fine on its own. I think even my 3 year old dwarf tree could deal with 1.5". But that would be enough to plan on replacing my 2 year old dwarf grafts. My roommate is good about weed eating trees to death. It's only a whack here and there (except for the new tree that he debarked clear around once), but a little bit every week for 6 months adds up. It took a lot of yelling to get him to stop weed eating the trees at all.