Gadenin日本語Get the appLate winter: the last calm weeks
This shrub breaks dormancy earlier than almost anything else in the fruit garden, so the window for winter work closes sooner than you expect. Get any structural pruning done in a dry spell while the buds are still tight, and stop as soon as they begin to swell and show color at the tip.
Black knot is easiest to see now, with the stems bare, and this is the right time to cut it out. Work through each bush looking for black swellings and dead or split wood, cut well below the damage, and take the prunings away to be burned or binned. Clean the blades between cuts.
Check the ground while you are there. Pull any mulch back from the stems, top it up if it has broken down, and clear away last year's mummified fruit and fallen leaves from under the bush. That debris is where brown rot spends the winter, and half an hour now is worth more than any spray later.
Early spring: bloom, and the only nights that matter
The bush covers itself in white and pink flowers, usually before the leaves are properly out, and the whole crop is decided over the following week or two. Watch the forecast every night through bloom. Open flowers are damaged at about 28F (minus 2C), so a single clear still night can end the season.
If frost is forecast, water the ground under the bushes in the afternoon and cover small plants with frost cloth or a sheet supported on stakes so it reaches the ground and does not rest on the flowers. Remove the cover in the morning. On larger bushes there is little to do but wait and hope the seedlings with different bloom timings carry you.
Cold, wet, still weather at bloom also suppresses the insects that do the pollinating, and since this shrub cannot pollinate itself, that matters. If the bees are not flying and the weather stays cold through bloom, hand pollination with a soft brush moved between flowers on your two different plants is worth the twenty minutes.
| Stage | Roughly when | Risk temperature | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buds swelling | First warm spell | 25F (minus 4C) | Finish pruning, watch the forecast |
| First flowers open | Very early spring | 28F (minus 2C) | Cover on frost nights, check bee activity |
| Full bloom | Within days of the first | 28F (minus 2C) | Hand pollinate if it stays cold, record the date |
| Petal fall | About a week later | 28F (minus 2C) | Watch for curculio, remove blighted shoots |
| Fruit set | Shortly after | 30F (minus 1C) | Nothing, the crop is decided |
Late spring: fruit swelling and the race with the birds
From petal fall to harvest is about eight weeks. In the first two, watch for plum curculio, whose crescent-shaped scars on young fruit are followed by an early drop; tap the branches over a sheet each morning and collect what falls, dropped fruit included. Cut out any shoots that died back behind blossom killed by brown rot.
This is the one stretch where water genuinely changes the crop. The berries are small and thin-skinned, and a dry spell during swelling gives you a smaller, drier harvest. If the soil is dry 4 inches (10 cm) down, give the root zone a deep soak of 5 to 10 gallons (20 to 40 liters) rather than a daily sprinkle.
As soon as the first hint of pink appears, the netting goes on, held off the foliage with stakes or a frame. Birds work on pink fruit, not red, and a bush left uncovered until it looks ready is a bush you will not be picking from.
Early summer: harvest, then straight into pruning
Fruit ripens roughly 55 to 65 days after full bloom. Full color is a signal to start tasting, not to pick; give it three or four more days until the berries are slightly soft and sweet behind the tartness. Then pick fast. The whole harvest runs over one to two weeks and the fruit will not keep more than a day or two, so have the freezer cleared and the pans ready before you start.
Pick over each bush two or three times a few days apart, rolling the berries off into shallow trays. Use a sheet under the branches for the final pass to take everything that is genuinely ripe and clear the over-ripe fruit that would otherwise rot in place and seed next year's brown rot.
With the crop off and the netting down, prune. Summer cuts close fast, and you can see exactly which stems carried fruit. Take out one or two of the oldest, grayest stems at ground level, remove anything dead, crossing or cankered, cut surplus suckers flush with the soil while keeping one or two as replacements, and leave this year's slender new shoots alone because they are next season's flowers.
Late summer to winter: leave it alone
After pruning the shrub asks for almost nothing. Water only in real drought, and do not feed; late nitrogen produces soft growth that will not harden before the cold. Watch for spider mite stippling in a hot dry spell and for sawdust-like frass at the base of the stems, which means borers and calls for the affected stem to come out.
In autumn, resist the urge to prune. Cuts made now do not callus before the freeze, and on a shrub that breaks dormancy this early that means dieback. Instead, tidy: strip off any shriveled mummified fruit still hanging, rake up the fallen fruit and leaves, and top up the mulch over the root zone while keeping it a hand's width clear of the stems.
Through winter there is genuinely nothing to do. Nanking cherry is hardy to around minus 40F (minus 40C) and needs no protection, no wrapping and no covering. Its problem is never the depth of winter; it is the mild week in early spring that opens the flowers too soon. Use the quiet months to write up the season instead.
Before the notes go cold, record for each bush the date of full bloom, any frost nights during it, the date of first picking and the weight you got. Two seasons of that turns this calendar into your calendar, and tells you within a few days when to net, when to cover and when to clear the freezer.