I have about fifty red cherry pits that were given to me. What steps should I take to plant these to get the most trees? Local conditions: Soil is sandy to clay as one descends. Water drains quickly, get a fair amount of rain even in summer due to location between bay and ocean. High temps in the summer, mild winters with little snow.
If you are trying to grow orchard fruit you would be much better off planting grafted named selections of known desirable characteristics. Seedlings of such may prove to be rather different from the parent trees. And you have to wait for seedlings to reach sexual maturity and begin fruiting before you find out if you want to keep any of them. Otherwise as with seed of other cold climate trees a pre-treatment sequence will be needed to obtain germination. You have to duplicate natural climate events in order for the dormancy of the embryos to be overcome. They have this feature so they don't pop up at a dumb time, like right before winter. The easiest way is to make a special outdoor bed with provision for weed control and exclusion of animals that might be interested in digging up the pits or seedlings, sow the fresh seed there - and wait however long it takes for the weather to overcome the dormancy. If the seeds have been dried out for awhile, stored in a low humidity environment that might affect results - maybe causing them to take longer to come up, if nothing else. Search strings like cherry germination or cherry propagation to see what you can find out.
Thanks Ron. I've been reading all I can find. I will be container growing for now, and I was planning to try wintersowing. Do you think I can store the seeds in the fridge until January/February? Thanks again.