ZZtop,

I don't have this cultivar, but cherries are notoriously slow to start bearing, compared with most other grafted fruit trees. Also, six hours of sunlight in the summer seems a bit skimpy ... perhaps your tree will be able to "catch" more light as it grows taller.

zztop:

Six hours of sunlight is not enough for a cherry tree.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

I have this cultivar on GM61/1 from Bay Laurel Nursery. Dave Wilson is the nursery that grew the tree. My Crimson and Rainier on the GM61 have been very vigorous. It is supposed to be a dwarf but the trees continue to grow all summer and into the fall. Craig's Crimson is a genetic semidwarf, supposed to be 2/3 of standard. You may have the GM61 stock and it could be part of the problem. But the tree is pretty young to be bearing much unless you had a real dwarf rootstock like Gisela 5.

Six hrs isn't optimum sun but should be adequate in CA where there is very few cloudy days in summer. A neighbor of mine when I was in CA had some very shaded peach and cherries that seemed to bear about like mine. If anything the fruit quality is what suffered not the yield. If you can spray your fruit with gibberillic acid at 20ppm as the fruit changes from green to straw color, you will increase fruit size, firmness, and sweetness. I have finished spraying my cherries for this yr. One tree of Bing and Rainier in it's 4th leaf on Gisela 5 has about 10lb of fruit. The 3rd leaf Crimson has all of three fruit. Both are in my greenhouse.

I am taking out the trees on GM61 and getting real dwarfs on Gisela 5 or 12.

The Fruitnut

Has your Craig's Crimson done any better. I have one of the same age that I planted in late 2002 or very early 2003. It has grown tall and healthy, but haven't ever seen a cherry. As of today, I don't see any blooms or flowers either. When should I expect to see a flower?

I have limited space in my back yard, and I really hate to have this tree there if it isn't going to bear delicious fruit soon.

Geoffry

The tree grew 4" in 2006, and around 10 flowers and none of them fruited ( lack of chill hours?). I planted this tree in 2002. It still gets 6 hours of sunlight, waiting for it to grow bigger so that it can "catch" more sun light. I fertilize it with Citrus/Avacado fertilizer 3 times a year, 1/2 to 3/4 a cupfull at a time.

Looks like I may get lucky this year (2007). It has got many flowers this year, I would guess 150-200 flower buds.
Around half the buds have flowered (19th March 2007). If the fruits hold, will follow Fruitnut's advice about gibberillic acid, where do I buy the acid from ?

We had a good winter temperatures. Not sure how many chill hours. But I guess more than 1000 hours. I think this has defnitely helped along with the tree being 5 years old.

There are probably at least two factors at work. I have seen the chill requirements estimated anywhere from 500-800 hours for Craig's Crimson. The Dave Wilson website may have more info. This may or may not be an issue for you. The other is that depending on the rootstock, the tree will be more or less precocious (early bearing). Mazzard is not very precocious and can take up to 8 years to produce fruit. Gisela 5 (much more dwarfing rootstock)on the other hand is extremely precocious and will put out fruit the second year. I am unsure how precocious the GM61/1 is, but that may be playing in. Generally, the more dwarfing a rootstock, the more precocious the tree becomes. Be warned that with the Gisela rootstocks you will likely need to do some thinning, especially with self-fertile cultivars. They tend to overproduce.

The first thing to do if you are not getting flowers on your Craigs Crimson is to stop fertilizing the tree. The shade may be a problem as well. What is happening is that the tree is in a juvenile state which is being prolonged by stressless conditions, no heat, plenty of food, etc. I would recommend pruning the tree about 90 days post bloom, cutting back all of the current years growth to 12" shoots. Another way to stress the tree would be to cut the water back in the fall and dry it up some make it wilt a little. Your tree is behaving like a "20 something" spoiled teenager. It has everything it needs, so why grow up and move out? Cut back on the resources, inject a little stress and they'll both mature rather quickly.