 Welcome to the Spring Fever Garden Forums where we connect you the gardener with the experts at North Dakota State University. My name is Tom Cobb. I'm an extension horticulturist in the Department of Plant Sciences. And I'm joined tonight by Scott Swanson, an electronic media specialist in the Department of Agriculture Communications. This is the fourth and final of our night of forums. And tonight we're going to focus on some special topics. The format we use is one we always use and we start with a 20 minute presentation give or take. And then we have about 10 to 15 minutes of questions. And we really do want your participation questions you've been doing a great job of asking so many wonderful questions you really add a lot to this program and I appreciate that. So let's get started. Sour cherries are a bright addition to a backyard, but they may suffer from a few pest problems. I can say that myself. Every summer I battle the birds for those cherries on my cherry tree. It's a fierce battle, but I do not relent. I fight on and I gather the harvest. And it is with some good advice will be Kathy Weederhold. Now Kathy she manages the orchard at the Carrington Research and Extension Center. The fruit project at the center started in 2006, and it seeks to introduce hardy fruits to gardeners and growers across North Dakota. Kathy welcome to the forums. Hi Tom hi everyone it's good to. Well I guess I can't say see everyone but it's good to talk to everyone. I'm gardening to do coming up here and, and we'll get going. So, yeah I'm going to talk about cherries and we've had cherries at the research center since 2007 2007, and we have both some trees and we have shrubs from Canada, and I just want to talk to you first about growing zones because we are in zone for a for most of the state zone 3b and the biggest question I get is, can we grow sweet cherry so we're just going to get this out of the way for everyone right away. It would be very difficult to grow sweet cherries someone just contacted me they hadn't they had a question from Stark Brothers nursery there was a sweet cherry that's rated to zone. I don't know if they said four or five. But I said you know, of course you can try it you can try anything, but it's, it's tough because our growing zone, you know, everybody knows right. The day was a very nice day tomorrow's going to be winter, and that is the problem in North Dakota it's these warm and cold warm and cold, and sweet cherries are not set up for that. Solar cherries however are. So there's quite a few different sour cherries we can grow in North Dakota. And, but I would, I would be very hesitant to grow a sweet cherry. Yeah. So, the other thing to think about with cherries is, is where they ripen in your in your in your harvest period and this is the, this is the kind of little, little diagram I made of the fruits that we grow at the Research Center but there's also some other ones like strawberry and raspberry we don't grow those we don't grow those, but we start off with Hascaps in in in late June and then early July or Hascaps and then we move through there. And what I especially want you to notice about this is that the fruits that are colored in red are very favorite by spotted ring Drosophila fruit flies. Probably some of you have experienced with these fruit flies, and it is the only thing that's really holding you back from growing cherries and but but also strawberries and raspberries here in North Dakota. I should also say that Hascaps and Juneberries and black currants are also affected by spotted ring Drosophila, but the red tender fruit are definitely more favored by the fruit flies. So, so to talk more about the cherries so yeah we got our first plants in 2007, and they came from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. It was actually one of the propagators and we were the first first people actually in the US to really have these cherries because they weren't licensed for the US but the university said that we could have, we could have these here in at Carrington for the project. So, this picture here I'm pretty sure is of Carmine jewel was just a really nice plant really beautiful blooming, and the whole row of these cherries looks like this pretty much every year they bloom, bloom every year. We've had a year or two and we haven't had cherries but that's because of like late frosts and stuff. But yeah they're they're just a really hearty and kind of a beautiful plant they're there's there's their bark is kind of a circular little circular stripes on there there's some specs on it is kind of red and shiny. It's really, they're really nice plants. So, with all those flowers you might think oh like what do I need for colonizing. Well, for what for the first thing, you only need one cherry plant you don't need to. So to assume that you have better fruit setting if you have a couple plants but you don't need two plants so that's kind of nice for a yard. These plants only get about seven feet tall by about seven feet wide maybe give or take a foot either way. But they, they're pretty compact and and they're a nice size for for backyard. So that's, that's kind of interesting. So, pollinators on the left hand side here are, well that's a fly actually it kind of looks like a bee is fuzzy, but it's got big eyes and it's got that funky little antenna in the front there so that's actually a fly. And then on the right hand side is a bee but it's not a honeybee that's actually some kind of an andrina, and they nest in the ground they're one of our multiple multiple wild bees that nest in the ground. So, I think I always find them exciting and then I've got one more cool pollinator to show you. I don't know if this is a pollinator, but these are, this is a Tennessee warbler, and when the cherries are in bloom is usually not always but usually when the warblers are coming through North Dakota. And I have, of course, taken a whole day sometimes and just sat and taken pictures of the warblers. But this is a nice picture. These, these birds are in there they're pecking down in the flowers, and I cannot actually see what they're doing you know warblers are insect eaters so are there little flower thrips that are down inside the flower. I don't think they'd be going after nectar because that's not their thing. And they aren't eating the flowers like cedar wax wings you know they'll eat the flowers. So, I don't know I think he's going after insects and you can see all the pollen around his bill though so that's kind of cool, they would help out with pollinating. So, after pollination, you know the flowering time is the second half of May usually doesn't really matter the year but it's somewhere in the second half of May. And then you get this fruit set, and not all the flowers. Generally, I've never seen all the flowers set into fruit, and that's a good thing because there are a lot of cherries on these plants and it would be, it would be pretty crazy if you got as many as you like you could potentially could. So, but yeah these are the little cherries, and I want you to make note of these little cherries because this is actually a good time to prune your cherries and we'll start here, and I'll say that these were not pruned at that time but they were pruned through a dormant this is sometime in April or May, and these are from when the cherries were. I think they were in their third season so they were planted in 2007 and 2008 they grew, and then this was 2009. So, on the left hand side you can see all these branches pretty thick right, and then on the right hand side, I think about. We use our pruning methods, our good pruning methods where you want to remove things that grow inward, things that grow downward, just little spindly things, you just want your strongest plants, your strongest stems to grow, because most of the energy in your plant is in the roots, and if you take out the unnecessary stuff before, before the plant starts to grow, it can only put that energy into the good, good shoots and then they'll be stronger they'll grow faster. They'll achieve the plant that you want it to be. So sometime between, sometime after blossom, let me say this sometime after blossom, and up to like a larger fruit you kind of after blossom or right at fruit set is a good time to prune cherries, it's a good time to prune plums, and it's good time to prune apricots. And the reason it's a good, a good time is because the plant has spent a lot of energy making the flowers and the, and the fruit. And now if you prune at this point, the plant will not regrow crazily. So for many years I pruned when they were dormant just like these pictures look, and every year there was a lot of inner growth by the middle of summer they had grown new shoots in response to the pruning. And then one year when I had a I had a fungal problem in there I pruned in summer. And the next spring I noticed the plants did not regrow crazily as I say they didn't grow crazily. They just stayed kind of nice so then I thought well this is a great idea. I read that you should prune plums when it's warmer, warmer when it's between flowering and fruiting also. And, and recently I have found out that there's another reason to prune later. And that is because sometimes we have a canker that it's called Volsa or cytospera canker, and it can cause gamoses on your prunus trees. And it's actually more active when the, when the season is when the season is for dormancy like in the cool damp weather, that's when it's most active. And if you prune when the, when it's warmer and the plant is growing, it can quickly close those wounds and then you won't have so much damage from that, from that fungus growing so. Anyway, so let's continue on here to what we really want to see is all these cherries. So I'm pretty sure this is Carmine jewel. And Carmine jewel was one of the first plants released by the University of Saskatchewan. So, I should talk about that a little bit. The, the University of Saskatchewan started their cherry breeding work about by this time it's been at least 60 years. It was for sure, like 50 years or so before they released their varieties. It was just kind of extra work if you had some extra time, maybe somebody gave you a cherry plant they were kind of working with this way back when. And then when Dr Bob or started there, they really said, let's look at these cherries and I don't know if they did crosses still then or if they just said let's look at what we have available. And so these cherries turned out kind of across from like a north star cherry and these Mongolian cherries. And the thing about the Canadian cherries is they are read all the way through so a normal tart cherry red skin on the outside yellow flesh on the inside. So these cherries are red fleshed on the inside so they are higher in all the anthocyanins and all the flavonoid compounds that the cherries will have. So that's pretty cool. And they are hardy to zone to which is great because we're like zone three and four here in North Dakota so they should definitely be hardy. And what else oh the shrub that they're shrub size not not not a tree size so they're really easily manageable. And many of these varieties are firm are firm fruit they they're not really they're not as tender as some they're more firm, some of them are more firm like a sweet cherry. So that's kind of nice. And then when these cherries are really ripe I mean here in these pictures you can see that they are the red they're like cherry red. On the left side you can kind of see that some cherries are darker colored, and the true ripe cherry for these is like a deep burgundy color. You know, and with spotted winger's awful I'm just going to say you pick them when when you think they're good enough, you know, but the true ripe is a is a burgundy color about two weeks after they turn red and get tender you can let them. I mean, if you had the possibility, you could just let them hang for weeks until they got very sweet and very dark red. So that is probably a good summary of the cherries here. So here was a picture of Carmine Jewel just an awesome awesome producing cherry. It is the most heart of all the cherries so from my husband pies were a little too tart with Carmine Jewel but I grew up with sour cherries and they're just totally fine with me and I eat too many out in the field so. So yeah, this was Carmine Jewel. So far as the varieties go. We had 30 pounds per plant 30 pounds of cherries per plant with Carmine Jewel just in the fourth year so that was really an amazing amount of fruit and we had it a couple times like that I think we even had more like 35 pounds one year. So, it wasn't as sweet as some of the other ones but it's pretty good. So our passion was the other plant, those two we passion and jewel we planted in 2007, and we had them until 2015 I believe, maybe 2016. And the crimson passion never produced as much fruit only nine pounds of plant per plant was the most it produced in his third year. But the thing is, it is like I said firmer, and it was sweeter and really you could eat crimson passion right off the tree. So that was kind of nice. And then Juliet we have we have Romeo and Juliet now, and the Juliet so far we the last previous two years we had eight pounds of fruit per plant which was pretty good that's like fourth and fifth year. And then this past year, even with the drought we had 15 pounds of fruit off of each of the, each of the plants so really a nice crop, and then the sugars this year were 16%. So that's, that's pretty good. I believe that a typical tart cherry from Wisconsin or Minnesota or Michigan rather is around 11 or 12% sugar so these are these are sweeter than typical sour cherries. And then, and then to mention Romeo, Romeo has had very small crops and by the time, by the time it's ready for them to be picked the squirrels have eaten them like the last three years so it's been pretty disappointing. But they're sweeter, and I believe they're Dr boards is favorite of all the cherry so. See that are Valentine, I think it's Romeo, because there's two more. There's Cupid and Valentine, but those aren't available here in the US so. I just have these four from the University of Saskatchewan Carmine jewel crimson passion Juliet and Romeo. And the one thing I want to suggest is that maybe Juliet should be your choice, because Juliet ripens about for us about two weeks earlier than we've had we had some overlap with the Evans cherry because I told you that I took out the Carmine jewel and crimson passion. It was just too much work with those with the fruit flies too much heartbreak. But we still had the Evans tree cherry and Evans always ripened about three to five days after jewel and passion. And so the Evans overlap with Romeo and Juliet, and Juliet was right two weeks before the Evans tree ripens about two weeks earlier than these other cherries. And even with Romeo, even though I hardly get any fruit I mean I handful to eat myself. Because of the squirrels. It's it ripens about two weeks earlier than Romeo to so with the pressure from the fruit flies I mean you can fight them off for so long but sometimes they just overwhelm your defenses. It would be best to get a cherry that ripens as soon as possible so that the fruit fly numbers are as low as possible. So, of these four I would go for the Juliet. So, let's see what he got. Oh yeah here's this picture. I call this the cherry blood bath. I have this pitter. It's a life height, which is German L E I F H E I T life height, and that the top the very the the the handle on the top. There's a spring in there and you can just hit it you just or pressed it whatever you just, I call it Boink a Boink a Boink a and you just drop the cherries in, and I drop them in my hand I mean I guess you could fill up that tray but for sure if I drop them in my hand one after the other, then I generally get all the pits out. And there's many ways to pit your cherries I know. But I like this method it works pretty good. It probably takes me. I don't know like half an hour to do this many cherries. So, there's that they they made a wonderful pie I made I made pie this fall and we really enjoyed it so this was the Juliet cherry. All right, now we will talk about everything I hate. The spotted wing Drosophila, the worst. These are the fruit fly pictures there in the center is a little hole that comes from the fruit fly laying his egg on there, and then on the right are the little larvae that get in there. And what I said on the left hand side here, you can get your crop by luck, you can net your crop, you can spray your crop, or sadly, you can just give up I mean. I really had to buy a giant sprayer for the research center because I spent from 2012 until 2018 not getting a crop really until 2020 not getting a crop because of the fruit flies. So, it's ridiculous. And then to quickly finish these are the problems that we've had the fruit flies and then we have we seek them also in our plants. And this either comes from mechanical injury like pruning or you hit it with a mower. And winter injury can do this there might be insects and then fungal diseases and improper growing methods. I'm not sure what those are but improper growing methods, but we think ours might be coming from fungal disease or pruning, and you can see the canker along the stem sometimes and we have seen we have seen the canker sometimes so I'm going to be much more careful and be careful with my pruning and see if we can get rid of this because a couple plants in Juliet now have it. The other problem we've had one time one time I didn't get a chance to finish pruning the cherries in the spring. And this is the year I learned that if you prune later, it's better. But we got these little spots on the leaves and on the fruit and maybe Tom can tell me but I don't think it was brown rod I think it maybe was an anthracnose or something. It didn't seem to match the other diseases I could find online at the time and I haven't looked since so you know I don't know the answer. But by pruning this and getting the center opened up let some sunlight and air in there I've never had a problem since so so prune your cherries to keep the air moving through. And then the last thing I believe is rodent damage, we have had bowls chewing on our plants, and they love cherry bark they love prune bark. And so we had this damage, and on the right hand side I don't know if you can see it but that is some ugly pruning, because the bowls killed so much by girdling the stem, and then we had to print out those dead pieces and they grew back I think there are there shoots underneath and there's some ways you can plant to help avoid this so we can talk about that. I use bait stations now with with a with a rodenticide in there, and also cut the grass really short in the fall to make sure the bowls go away don't want them near my fruit at all. So, okay, that is the end I think we are on time. And I am ready for your questions. Yeah, we've got a lot of people are fascinated by that cherry pitter. So you see. Oh yeah. Should I get out should I escape. What should I do here. Oh no, I just have to go back to the. It's okay. Life height cherry pitter and it's available from the company it's available from Amazon people are chatting. It is. It is. How about let's get some you know, please. Okay, how much is it. How much is it. You're going to have to look at Amazon and I want to say I paid about $35 or $40 but this has been like 10 years ago. So, looks like a good machine. You know what I love the darn thing it like I said, Boink a Boink a Boink a Boink a juice goes all over do this outside. And I love it it's very sharp. So pretty cool. What does to cherries get black not disease. Cherries, any prunus can get black not but really just the choke cherries are really susceptible to it I have never seen it in ours and when I've read about it in the past, it's not, it's not as common in these other prunus varieties. So, okay, how about in Minnesota does is at SWD a problem in Minnesota. It's a problem all across the country since 2012. So, first notice in the US in 2008 and by 2012. I mean, if it made it to Minnesota and made it everywhere. So, it is a problem. So, we think it just blows up here from the south. Yeah, it's over winter. May blow in on the southern winds in the summer. So the northern part of our state will get it to probably, I've heard of it in almost every county in the state. So, do you ever plant cherries in a tree row. Um, if it wasn't for human consumption probably because if you get the fruit flies, they're just going to be there, but I think the birds are going to take them for sure the Robbins and then possibly the deer will be after them, I would assume. Okay, that's, it's okay to be nice to wildlife sometimes. Yeah, yeah. What do you think about a Nanking cherry. Um, the Nanking cherry, I don't know very much about them I know they're small they taste just like sour cherries I would definitely say they're delicious but the pit to fruit ratio is not as nice there's a lot more pit versus the fruit that you get off of them but they taste good. For voles. As far as protecting against voles, can you wrap a tree or paint them somehow to keep the voles away. You can wrap a tree and you can use like quarter inch half inch. What do you call that the wire, the net hardware cloth, hardware cloth, yes, and make a make a shelter with that. It's a little harder with these cherries because they are shrub and they get kind of wide right away at the base. So you can you can do it depends on how how eager you are to do this to do this wrapping or protection. So we, I use, I use a bait station that has a hole in it or you can drill a hole so you can definitely like get that thing down to the ground you don't want raccoons to take it you don't want dogs to take it. And then I actually use a rodenticide that's called tear add TRAD with a three at the end tear add three, because it's vitamin D three, it calcifies their little organs and they die. But if a dog or a cat or something were to eat that mouse, they would not be affected. So I don't want the foxes affected I don't want the coyotes affected. So, especially the foxes. So I use this safe rodenticide. Interesting. Or just like for lawns, you know, mow your lawn a little bit short don't have a tall lawn, right. Yeah. How about does Juliet produce a lot of suckers and if it does what how can you reduce that Juliet makes so many suckers it's ridiculous. I've never seen. I've never seen so many. So the only thing I do, or if it was growing with grass around it would be to mow it. We mow the grass and come through with some little loppers and put them off or I take my more and put them off. You can continue to mow these things. In my experience over time, it seems like the suckers continue to move outward with the with the new roots, and they've moved like 20 feet with my other plants to each side. Eventually the suckers that are coming up underneath the plant seem to go away somewhat, but then they continue at the tips of the roots. So Romeo, almost no suckers crimson passion, no suckers, but they have the least fruit. So in our experience, so it's a trade off. What do you think about that Evans Bali sour cherry. I love Evans Bali. I was able to keep the height around. Well, I don't know, probably the height is around 12 feet but I was able to keep it down to about eight to 10 feet tall kind of like apples and tons of fruit just so much fruit on each branch and they're going to come off until they come off the come off the tree on their own free will when you pull them, but the stem, the stem stays on the plant and then they're ripe and when they taste good, but the tree was hardy and they produce so much fruit and they're a little bit milder. And they're not read inside they're the yellow inside but they're a really nice cherry. I like, I like that too. How about what's the average diameter of these cherries. The crimson passion, I would say, close to being a quarter sized, at least, you know, my probably wider than it is tall but definitely close to being a quarter sized. These, these cherries, let me see. I'm trying to think how many grams they are, but they, they're very nice, I would say, um, see that's half inch five days, more between five days and three quarters of an inch would be the diameter of these cherries. The carmine jewel is a little smaller, more like half an inch, but the other, these, the other Canadian cherries are nice sized. Okay, this person has a love for nanking cherries, which of your cherries is closest to a nanking cherry. Maybe the carmine jewel because it's more tart. And productive. Yeah, yeah, but to falls to will will fall if falls to all the way around the tree. Will you lose the tree. Yes. I would lose everything above it. It needs the bark, you know, and if they chew to us from, if they chew at a certain height above the ground. There's like whip grafting you can make graphs in between and try to save it, you know, but you know, Canada recommends that when you plant these cherries. When you get the plant, you'll maybe have a two inch pot, about four inches deep, and then you'll have this this growth. Well, they maybe recommend planting it at an angle so part of the stem is under the ground, and then it will act like, like suckers, it'll act like suckers coming out from underneath the ground when these stems come up, or to plant the plant quite deeply you know normally we say only plant at ground level you don't want to bury the roots. You can actually plant cherry plants you can actually plant them quite deeply, and you want to cover maybe three or four inches above the above the root area, and that so that you can. So that it pretends to have suckers or whatever but it has more shoots that come up out of the sides and then it'll you'll be more protected against mouse damage you'll have some buds underneath the ground to come up. And when you mentioned about those bowls chewing all the way around a tree. That reminds you of a question I had once as an extension agent, somebody asked me Tom what's the easiest way to kill a tree. And I said just we just said just go around remove the bark all the way around it. And he said thanks Tom, I'm going to go kill my neighbor's tree right now. The true story. Oh my God. Don't do that anyone neighbor battles. That's the way it is. What do you spray your trees with to combat those those those vinegar flies fruit flies. Yeah, there is a handout and I have like the link but you have to read it. To the to the NDSU information about spraying for fruit flies, but I use I start with. I'm helping not carburel said. No, it's other malathion malathion I start with malathion because it doesn't last very long. And then I moved to like a spin a sad and I moved to a pyrethroid, which is a little higher duty heavy duty pyrethrin. And then I have one more that I can't remember right now it's a class of pesticides I've never used prior to last year. Okay, you can use your pesticide, two times, and then you have to switch to a whole new class so you use malathion which is an organophosphate, and then you spin a set which is a spin a set, and then use a, like, by fenthrin which is a, which is a pyrethroid so you have to understand this talk to your extension agent talk to Kathy. You have to understand what you're doing with these insect with these insecticides, and I have to say, I have sprayed by hand for years and had no luck. Absolutely no luck. That's why I tore out my cherries I was so disgusted, but we had to buy an air blast sprayer. But the other thing is is I may not have started early enough, I waited until I saw the fruit flies. And I think you need to start about 10 days before that. So, yeah, it's a timing method. What if you don't spray, can you just harvest the fruit, and with a little white unseen magazine inside. Correct, correct, you can as long as the fruit looks good, it is good. Yeah, you can eat it. It's up to you for how sour, you know, you can harm, they'll turn red and still be pretty tart and then they have to hang there until they get more sweet. It's up to you how much tartness you can handle. So where can we buy these shrubs. Well, in the handout I have some suggestions, I have seen them at Gurney's. Gurney's has them, and Your local nursery might have them. Your local nursery might have it. There's different nurseries, I would look by name, and you'll find some. And that Evan's probably everybody's got that. There's quite a few. All the big nurseries, all the local nurseries. Probably, probably. That's common. How about, what's a Wowza? Wowza, that's in the handout. It actually is a seedling relative of these Canadian ones of the of the Romeo the Juliet. But apparently it's longer it's more of an oval fruit and the pit is kind of oval shaped but it was licensed by gardens alive which is also Gurney's. It's licensed by them from the universities to sketch one, and then they have that one as their own, but then they also sell the Romeo the Juliet crimson passion I think Carmine Jewel. Do any of your dwarf sour cherries not sucker crimson passion does not sucker and the Romeo, maybe a little but very, very negligible. Sounds like Romeo is really a limp. Juliet can do better. I think so. Romeo is not good enough. They're all about two weeks later though than Juliet. That's why I'm kind of favoring, I favoring Juliet right now. You know, can you be a little bit more specific about when's the ideal time to prune? Is it after the fruit sets and the plants no longer dormant? When you see the fruit starting to set, you know, like a week to 10 days after blossoming you'll see the fruit on the plant starting to set you'll see the green little balls starting to get bigger and bigger. That's the time to prune. That's a that's a good time to prune after blue and anytime after blossom is really a good time. But you want to get them while the fruit is still green and hasn't really started to swell a lot. Kathy, have you ever tried something like tango foot to get rid of these flies? No. No, it would have. Tangle foot would have to have something to attract the flies in there. They could accidentally get in there. But let me tell you, people have tried a million things by now because every strawberry, every raspberry, every cherry you buy from the store is affected by fruit flies. You didn't mention about what do you do about the birds? The birds. I don't shoot them because that's illegal. Who suggested that? I know someone who suggested that, but they're not an extension person. You know, I have some netting, some is netting to keep bees away from oranges. That's another story too. It keeps your oranges seedless. Anyway, but I have this and I did use it, I did use it last year to make sure we kept enough fruit for field day. I think then the mesh is small enough that you could net against the birds and you could net against the fruit flies. The problem is, can you net against the squirrels? I don't know because those squirrels are quite persistent. How about do nanking cherry suckers as well? I don't know. I want to say no. I know friends who had them years ago and I don't remember suckers and I have not heard that they sucker. Evan's Bali tree, how do you trim it to a smaller height? You have to use your pruning methods for like apple trees and you prune to a side branch. And you know you have that pyramid form or you have the leader. And when the tree gets to a certain height, you have to remove the upright leader and then you prune to a nice branch that is growing a bit sideways. That will be your new dominant branch and you can, by pruning every year, you can keep that tree a little shorter. Kathy, we got all the questions on cherries, so thank you so much. This is so interesting and good luck with your fruit planting and I hope the blizzard doesn't cause you any harm. Yeah, we'll see. Thanks everybody. Thank you, Kathy. It was great. You had the most interesting research. Thank you. You do. I just love it. So innovative. Bye bye. Okay, thanks.