How to Care For a Pie Cherry Tree
- 1). Grow tart cherries in full sun to help the fruit ripen.
- 2). Place a 2-inch-thick layer of mulch around the base of your tree to help the soil retain moisture and cut down on weed growth. Keep mulch a few inches away from the tree's trunk. Hand pull weeds that grow around your cherry tree.
- 3). Prune your tart cherry tree each spring. Remove dead or diseased branches. These cherries grow best with four fruit-bearing limbs spaced around the tree trunk, at least 2 feet from the ground. Remove competing limbs and limbs that grow too close to the trunk, leaving limbs that have a wide "crotch angle" between the limb and trunk. Cut off suckers growing from the trunk. Every spring, prune your tree to keep this basic shape; trim back long limbs to control the tree's size.
- 4). Fertilize your pie cherry tree each spring, one month before your tree blooms, using 10-10-10 fertilizer. Apply the right dosage for your tree -- based on the tree's size -- and scatter fertilizer around the base of the tree, then water the ground.
- 5). Water the tree with 1 inch of water each week, unless you receive enough rainfall that week.
- 6). Cover the tree canopy with netting to prevent birds from eating your pie crop. Remove the netting when you want to harvest the fruit, then store it for the next season's crop.
- 7). Pick pie cherries by hand, removing the cherry and stem. Wait until your cherries fully ripen to a red or black shade.