cherry
When to prune cherry trees?
- Botanical name
- Prunus avium
- Family
- Rosaceae
Cherry trees are pruned from July to August. They are planted from October to March. They are harvested from June to July.
Cherry trees are woody perennials. The edible part is the fruit.
Cherry trees through the year
JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
this week
Pruning
Planting
Harvest
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- pruning
- planting
- harvest
In short
Pruning
from July to August
weeks 30 to 35
Planting
from October to March
week 44 to week 13 of the next year
Pruning cut
in summer
Spacing between plants
4 m
First crop
after 4 to 7 years
Harvest
from June to July
weeks 26 to 31
Growing conditions
🪨
Soil
loamy
🧪
pH
6.5 to 6.7
☀️
Sun
full sun
💧
Water
little water
❄️
Frost
overwinters outdoors
📏
Height
3 to 8 m
🐝
Pollination
needs a pollinating variety nearby
⚠️
Toxicity
toxic to people and animals, toxic parts: stems, leaves, flowers and seeds
Pests and diseases
Listed here is every problem for which the sources name this plant as a host. The problems are not listed in order of how common they are.
Aphids
pest- Signs
- Colonies of small aphids sit on the shoot tips and the underside of the leaves. The leaf curls and puckers, and sticky honeydew is left on everything below. The viruses they carry are more dangerous than the feeding itself.
- Prevention
- Go easy on nitrogen, because soft sappy growth is what aphids are looking for. Encourage the predators (ladybirds, lacewings, parasitic wasps). Use a reflective mulch, which puts them off settling, and a strong jet of water to knock the colony off the tips.
Bacterial canker of stone fruit
disease- Signs
- On the trunk and branches there are sunken, dead patches of bark, oozing sticky gum in spring. The leaves carry small holes, as if the leaf had been shot through. The branch above a canker dies. Many a tree shows only leaf and shoot symptoms and never gets a canker on the trunk.
- Prevention
- The bacterium enters through wounds and through the leaf scars at leaf fall, so stone fruit is pruned in summer, when the tissue resists best, and never in winter. The same timing also protects against silver leaf.
- What to do
- The source states that for the home garden there is no product against this disease. What is left is cutting: take the cankered parts back to healthy wood, disinfect the tools as you go and remove the prunings from the garden.
Brown rot (monilia)
disease- Signs
- A brown rot spreading across the fruit, with light brown cushions of spores on it, often in concentric rings. The fruit drops or stays on the branch as a dried mummy.
- Prevention
- The fungus overwinters in mummified fruit and in cankered wounds in the bark, so collect and remove every rotten and mummified fruit and cut out affected twigs. The infection enters through a wound, so a net against birds takes away the main door. In a cluster it passes from one fruit to the fruit it touches.
- What to do
- For the home garden there are no fungicides against brown rot. What is left is picking off and removing the mummies as they appear and choosing less susceptible varieties.
Honey fungus
disease- Signs
- The plant dies suddenly, often in mid season and without any decline beforehand. Peel the bark at ground level and under it there is a white or cream sheet of fungal tissue, thin as the skin of a mushroom. In the soil there are black or brown strands like bootlaces. In late summer and autumn tufts of honey brown mushrooms with a whitish ring on the stalk appear by the stumps or over dead roots.
- Prevention
- The fungus spreads through the soil with its strands, from a few centimetres to a good hand's width below the surface, and infects the roots of a living plant when it touches them. So do not leave stumps and dead roots in the ground. No plant is completely resistant, but the source names privet, lilac, viburnum, weigela, forsythia, butterfly bush, rhododendron, thuja and walnut as particularly susceptible.
- What to do
- There are no products. The only thing that works is digging out and removing every infected root and stump, which takes away the food without which the strands in the soil do not grow. A vertical barrier of rubber or thick plastic sheet, buried about half a metre deep and standing a few centimetres above ground, stops the spread into an unaffected part of the garden.
Silver leaf
disease- Signs
- The foliage on one branch takes on a silver sheen and the branch then dies. Cut across, the dead branch has an irregular dark stain in the middle that does not follow the rings. On old dead branches bracket fungi grow later, with a whitish woolly upper side and a purple brown underside. A silver sheen without the dark stain in the wood is not this disease but the result of drought or cold.
- Prevention
- The spores are active from September to May and enter through wounds, above all through pruning cuts. Remove dead wood before fruiting bodies grow on it. Prune in summer, when there are no spores.
- What to do
- Cut the affected branch off as soon as you can, well below the point where the dark stain in the wood ends. Disinfect the tools as you go and remove the cuttings at once, because fruiting bodies go on developing on branches left lying about. Do not paint the wounds as a matter of routine, but do it where the disease keeps coming back.
Spotted wing drosophila
pest- Signs
- A ripening, still firm fruit gets tiny puncture holes and collapses within days. In the flesh there is a white larva. Unlike the ordinary fruit flies this one attacks undamaged fruit that is not yet overripe, so it is not a sign that the fruit has already spoiled but the reason it spoils.
- Prevention
- Pick as the fruit ripens and leave no overripe, damaged or fallen fruit on the plant or under it. Pheromone traps hung on the shady side of the bush or the tree do not put the population down, but they tell you whether the fly is already about and when it is time to protect. In a garden beside a wood or scrub hang them at the boundary first, because the fly overwinters in the wild.
- What to do
- Once the fruit is set, protect it with a very fine net, the mesh under one millimetre, because an ordinary net against birds does not hold the fly back. On top of that, strict hygiene: remove and dispose of every overripe and fallen fruit.
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Related plants
The plants below are in the same botanical family (Rosaceae).
Sources about the plant: ASPCA Toxic and Non-Toxic Plants, GBIF Backbone Taxonomy, Iowa State University Extension, NC State Extension Plant Toolbox, Oregon State University, Penn State Extension, Royal Horticultural Society, Virginia Cooperative Extension, Wikidata. Checked between 14 and 28 August 2026. The problem descriptions also draw on: Clemson Cooperative Extension, EPPO Global Database, University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, Utah State University Extension.