Am I missing something?

Yes, you are missing two things. Insect control and perhaps more importantly...bird control. If you want to spray sulfur at petal fall that's good, but sulfur will also control aphids too, and sulfur is effective at powdery mildew control. Sulfur will however also kill predatory mites, but so will a lot of other sprays.
Honestly...no joke, if you haven't grown cherries before, you really need to plan for the birds...they'll clean you out in 1 day and I'm not joking.
Buy the netting now...when the cherries come so come the birds...as soon as they begin to color. Hell, some birds eat them green.

Thank you Appleseed.

Ah! birds. how can I forget them. I have an owl I used for blueberry this year and sound like need to come up a netting plan.

For insects, I have zero experience. (only seen aphids and stink bug before). It seems not many non-synthetic options out there, Neem, Spinosad, Bt or pyrethrin. Any specific insect hurting cherry tree in east coast?

Thanks

This post was edited by FruitNewbieNYC on Tue, Oct 7, 14 at 13:48

I have sweet cherry trees for a few years in central MA.

The problems I have had are: cherry leave spot, canker, aphids, brown rot and birds.

I deal with these problems as follows:
For leave spot: Spray copper hydroxide in late fall (no leaves on trees) once and again in early spring before bud break. The brand I use is Kocide 3000

Canker : not too bad. Has not done anything to it.

Aphids: when leaves start coming out, I wrap the trunks with masking tape, sticky side out and smear it with Tangle foot glue. I do two taping like this on each tree trunk to prevent ants climbing up the trees to farm aphids.

I don't spray anything on aphid. I squish them with my hands. My trees are about 6-7 feet tall, not to hard to reach.

Birds: I net the trees with bird netting from American Nettings. The quality of the net is better that the one from Home Depot (HD net causes more damages to twigs/limbs when you take a net off).

Brown rot: I don't think you have powdery mildew. I think you have brown rot on your cherries (fruit). I did not have it at first but it increasingly is an issue after 4-5 years. I will spray with Monterey Fungi Fighter next year.

I don't know if sweet cherry is worth it. To me, pear, apple, even peach and plum give me less work and better rewards than growing cherry.

Mamuang,

Thank you for sharing.

I start to realize growing sweet cherry is definitely harder in our area. But I am not giving up yet, 2 more bareroot cherries coming in next spring (a pair of blackgold and whitegold) hopefully they will do better.

Yes, I am also trying asian pear (20th century), blueberry and raspberry. bluecrop and anne seem much easier. fruited the first year.

Alex

This post was edited by FruitNewbieNYC on Tue, Oct 7, 14 at 21:50

Alex,

I have Black Gold, Vandalay and Big Star (just planted).

Black Gold is good but I like firm, sweet cherry like Bing. BG is a bit soft. My conclusion is that if I can't grow my own fruit that taste better than what I can buy from a supermarket, I don't need that fruit. I am about to make such a conclusion on sweet cherry.

I have 20th Century and Korean Giant Asian pears. I prefer KG to 20th. KG tastes sweeter and a lot bigger. 20th is juicy and mildly sweet. If I were to do it again, I'd grow KG and Conjuro.

mamuang,

Thank you for the advices.

Re: Blackgold is soft (ah! no wonder it is more rain cracking resistant) now, I will have right expectation.

Re: Asian pears, do you know any varieties that can handle partial sun? I have one spot amount of sun it gets maybe the concern..

Alex

My Black Gold's texture is definitely not firm. It's soft but sweet enough. I got about 2 lbs of them this year.

I do not know about BG being crack- resistant. To me, it depends on when it rains. When cherries are closer to ripen and if it's dry for a week or more and then rains, every cherry cracks (had that happened last year).

I have 20th Century and KG in full sun. They grow fast and produce well (if thin well). My Hosui is behind these two and they block out some sun.(bigger trees than Hosui).

Housi grows a lot slower and is not productive at all.Then again, Hosui is closer to a row of old pine trees in my neighbor's yard. Getting less sun and being closer to bigger trees, could be the contributing factors of why the tree has issues.

Thank you mamuang. really learned a lot.

Alex