Many more flowers have bloomed this year, but unsure if they will form into fruit yet. Since these trees are so young they may not be ready to bare any cherries yet. But I hope one day they will and looking forward to tasty sweet cherries to munch on and to cook with.
Glad they made it through the winter okay, being their second year in the ground I am learning about their cycles. The cherry trees seem to drop their leaves early on in the autumn and I was not quite ready for that. I thought a fungus was going after the leaves. But now seeing them all fresh this year I think it was just the normal seasons making the leaves drop.
The cherry blossoms have a slight smell to them, but mostly just look pretty. I have seen pollinator activity around them so hoping when they are ready to produce the bees and other insects will help with that.
I keep different cultivars near each other for cross pollination. Not all of my cherry trees need this but for the ones that do, they are near each other.
Ants can be seen roaming the trees, the plant wants this and produces chemicals that attract ants. This will help keep other insects off the plant.
This year is the first time the minnie royal flowered, this cultivar requires less chill hours than the other cherry trees. Which means it can be grown in areas without much of a winter.
Pollen can be seen all over the leaves, not from the cherry tree itself but from all the large trees in the region flowering as well.
I see some spent buds and I will keep an eye on them to see if they form anything.
Now these trees are getting taller than me, though I wont trim them for awhile. I want all the new growth to go towards making energy to grow fruit. I can prune them when they are getting a little too big. And since they are semi dwarfs they should be pretty manageable.
With all this new growth I wonder how long it will take to grow into a large tree. With a few feet of growth just within a year I do not think it will be very long before then.
Squatting near the Lapins, it is one of the self pollinating cultivars. I have two other kinds as well that do require pollination. Such as the black tartarian and the minnie royal cultivars.
The minnie royal above, I can see how it got its name. Its stayed pretty small and out of all four of my cherry trees it is by far the smallest.
Soon enough I will not be able to reach the top of many of these, but for now they are just about as tall as me. Still young trees, but in a few years I think I wont be able to say that anymore.
