My husband and I bought our first house two years ago, in the backyard are many fruit trees (apple,plum, bing cherry, and renier cherry) the first summer all was well. In the winter my husband lightly pruned all the trees, that spring we noticed the cherry trees weeping sap and only the top branches produced leaves and blossoms, but only on the tips. Now going into the third summer the same thing is happening again, both of our other fruit trees are doing fine. Help! How do we save the trees.
Sweet cherry is prone to multiple problems when attempted as an orchard fruit here. That is why those two are presenting issues and the other kinds are not. Your easiest solution would be to take them out and buy your cherries at the store. The two kinds you have named (note that spelling of the one name is 'Rainier') are also ones that are easily found at markets. I would have chosen alternative kinds if I were planting my own cherry trees - getting access to fruits of cultivars not sold by grocery stores would be one of the main reasons for my planting them. http://pep.wsu.edu/hortsense/script...asp?tableName=plant&problemID=39&categoryID=3
I recommend the Stella Compact variety of sweet cherry for this area. I've been growing this variety, and the regular Stella, for many years with minimal problems. However, the recent appearance of the Spotted Wing Drosophila fruit fly does give me pause about recommending any variety of cherry. They have even decimated my Montmorency sour cherries the last two years.
