I am building a homestead in South central Kansas, US.
I have always had horrible luck with cherries, but I am now the lucky winner of the cherry lottery. Three seedlings came up, so far they have survived!
So I have an opinion question. I have an adult cherry, probably a sour cherry, in the yard right by the house. Since it has survived this long I assume it has the endophytes in the soil to help the baby cherries survive.
However, it has grown right in the path of the constant winds. I’m talking often 30+ mph, and no matter where they blow from (NW, S, or directly from the East) it gets the full blast.
Should I:
Plant the cherries under the older tree
Dig up soil from around the tree to inoculate another spot
Keep the trees protected and inoculate in pots
I would definitely lean toward the first, if it weren’t for the constant wind. I would lean strongly away from the last, again, if it weren’t for the constant wind.
I’d lean heavily towards the first option, too. Maybe that older tree will protect them from at least some of the wind. And if it’s nearby, it may teach those baby trees how to survive in your climate.
The second option is best. The first and third options aren’t bad either. Like most farming questions the answer is usually “it depends”. In your case, you know your situation best and can only make the move you can make with the time and resources you have.
Regardless of which option you choose, I would also consider using a compost tea made from material local to you to activate and awaken the microbiome. This is something you should be doing consistently and over time, for any tree that you want to thrive. It’s partially about fertilization but equally about the way the endophytic microbiology follows the pathway of nitrogen and into the plant as an inoculate.
One of the benefits of thinking in terms of endophytes is to know that they are already present.
Your job is simply to increase and activate what is already in your system.
How would you recommend creating this compost tea for cherries, particularly if the parent trees are grown on a historically-tightly-mown lawn? Fruits, leaves, and local grass clippings? Maybe some topsoil, particary roots from other species in the cherry’s shade?
I’ve made one compost tea with passive, anaerobic processes… I don’t think I really understood the process but I did “make one”. So I’m certainly a novice at this. Thanks for your insight!
It could be a nice experiment. Grow two close to the adult tree, one further on in a good spot and feed it some soil in water a couple of times. After a year move one of the seedlings away from the mother tree, not far from the one you’ve been feeding soilwater.
I’ve done quite a bit of microbiome enhancement. Take a few gardentrowels full of soil close to a winner tree and mix in water and can it around to young trees and shrubs.
Recently I’ve turned to making a aerated compost tea with a pump and some bio melasses. Watercanning all the trees after a walk carrying a bucket taking soil from strikingly beautiful oaks and hornbeams and hazelnuts and nitrogen fixing alders creating lush soils.
After 12 hrs bubbling it’s mostly microbes, after 24 hrs mycelia and after 36 flagellates. The microbes got more dispersed toward annuals and perennials and shrubs, the latter towards younger trees.
