Good Morning, I came across these forums while browsing the internet and was astonished by all the knowledgeable members who take their time to provide advice to others; so, I thought I would try my luck… thank you in advance to those who can help out! Background Info: -I consider myself an “amateur†in the garden as I have only recently moved into a home with actual gardening potential. -Upon moving into our home in December, we were handed a diagram labelling the fruit trees we currently have in our yard and were simply told that all fruit was edible. I have done absolutely nothing this year to the trees as I figured I would use our first summer to see what grows. Surprisingly, Mother Nature has taken good care of the trees on her own and almost all of the trees have produced fruit. -I don’t know how old the trees are; however, the house was built in 2002, so I could assume that they are no older than 7 years. -I live in Calgary, AB, which according to my research is in Zone 3a. I am going to post each of our trees (with pics) in separate posts and here’s where you come in; I need help/advice/feedback regarding the following: -Do you know what specific species of pear/apple/plum/cherry tree this is? -What kind of maintenance/pruning/etc. needs to be done to reach its maximum potential? -When do I harvest the fruit? -How do I store the fruit? -Is it ripe enough to eat or will it never ripen to a point where it is edible based on our planting zone? -Lastly, if you know of any good online resources, I would be grateful if you could drop me some links. Here's the next tree: Cherry Tree This tree absolutely amazes me (I didn’t think the fruit would reach this size and color). To be honest, I guess I lied about doing absolutely nothing to the trees as I tried to deal with a horrible aphid infestation on this tree about a couple months ago. After a quick google search I decided to try spraying the tree with water in “power wash†mode and after drenching many pedestrians walking on the sidewalk behind the fence (oops) I managed to remove maybe ¼ of the aphids. Fortunately, we had a powerful thunderstorm a few weeks ago that actually removed another chunk of the aphids, leaving it with about ¼ of what we started with. Actually, now that I’m coming clean, I also recall chopping down a few cherry tree branches that were getting out of control. I am especially curious about what I can do with these cherries as they are still very tart.
