Sweet cherries have historically been the “forbidden fruit” for San Diego gardeners. Our mild winter climate does not provide enough chilling for standard cherries like ‘Bing’ and ‘Royal Ann.’ Now, local gardeners can successfully grow sweet cherries near the coast by planting two new low-chill varieties.
UC master gardener Cindy Sparks planted the new cherries, ‘Royal Lee’ and ‘Mini Lee’, in her Point Loma garden in January 2008. Both trees grew well and produced a nice crop of cherries in 2010. Other master gardeners who planted both cherries in Carlsbad, Rancho Santa Fe and La Mesa have also harvested fruit from their trees.
The cherries Sparks planted were grafted on a dwarfing root stock, Colt, which helps control the tree’s size. To protect the ripening fruit from birds, Sparks built a tall framework of plastic pipe around her trees and covered them with netting when the fruit started to ripen. She kept her trees confined within the framework by pruning back long shoots in winter and again in late summer.
The low-chill cherries are propagated by Dave Wilson Nursery, a wholesale grower, and are sold through retail nurseries. There’s still time to buy and plant dormant cherry trees if you act quickly. ‘Royal Lee’ is a very firm, heart-shaped, red cherry with excellent flavor. It is very productive when planted with another variety for pollination. ‘Mini Royal’ is used as a pollinator for ‘Royal Lee’. ‘Mini Royal’ is a medium-sized, red cherry with good flavor. Both varieties only need about 200 hours of winter temperatures below 45 degrees, compared with at least 700 hours for standard cherries.
Both cherries have an upright growth habit and can grow to more than 40 feet tall, but stay much smaller when grafted onto a dwarfing root stock.
Q: When I remove a branch from the trunk of a tree, how close should the cut be made?
A: New vigorous shoots called suckers or water sprouts and small branches can be cut close to the trunk or branch from which they arise. This is usually done with a single upward cut using a hand pruner for small shoots and a lopper for branches up to an inch in diameter.
A flush cut close to the trunk should not be used when a larger limb is removed. Most trees form a raised collar (also called branch bark ridges or shoulder ridges) on the top and bottom of branches where they attach to the trunk. The collar tissue promotes faster wound closure and should be retained. When a larger limb is removed, the final cut should be made just beyond the collar tissue. The cut will not be flush or parallel with the trunk, but will be out from it slightly with the lower edge of the cut further away from the trunk than the top one. Such a cut will form a smaller wound than a flush cut and it will close more quickly.
Q: We moved and inherited an old fig tree. How should it be pruned?