Montmorency is the one I see most often at the nurseries. Have never grown it myself. The way the squirrels drag around the tomatoes from yard to yard in my neighborhood I was afraid to risk it with cherries. Wish I had tried though, the dull silverbell I planted instead doesn't feed me!

Hi WorldOfYardCraft! The size would depend on the particular cherry and the rootstock it is on. I have a Balaton sour cherry on Mazzard trained as a fan. Off hand, I donÂt remember how big it could potentially get, but I will not allow it to get taller than 8Â because thatÂs as high as I can reach on a single step. Ooh! Bad news, sorry! I just Googled on Balaton Cherry and one site does not recommend it for the southern USA, says it wonÂt set buds due to insufficient chill hours and is prone to disease in the warmer climate:/ IÂm sorry to read that! I Googled a little more and found a GardenWeb Post about southern struggles growing sour cherries, so maybe they wonÂt work for you in Zone 10. Sigh:/ I read somewhere that gooseberries will grow in shade, but I have not experience with them. Wishing you more replies. Regards, PoseyPlanter

You should cut a couple of inches of the branches that have no leaves. Check to see if the cut areas have green cambium. If they are dry, brown, those are dead. You should trim them off and follow Konrad's advice on how to grow a new central lead for this tree. iyour tree probably on a dwarf rootstock. But usually even a dwarf chery rootstock, a tree could grow to 12-15 ft. Not sure how good is your soil.

Sour cherries are much less finicky then sweet cherries and can be grown much easier. I've seen sweet cherry tree and sour side by side and birds would clean up the sweet cherries but hardly touch the sour ones, depend location and other food sources. Up here north I don't need to spray and get loads of sour cherries, birds rarely take any since there are lots of other native berries around like Saskatoon's and choke cherries they prefer.