Our Cherry Tree – It’s the cherry on the cake!

It was the garden apprentice that chose this cherry tree. It must be around ten years ago now, and it spent the first few years of its life in a pot.

It was one of those spontaneous buys at the garden centre. It was April and as a result it was covered in blossom, making it look magnificent and irresistible!

It’s full name is Prunus avium ‘Stella’ and it is a sweet desert cherry. Dark red fruits that can be eaten straight from the tree. Unlike the sour cherry trees which are more commonly grown for their ornamental qualities.

I’d always thought that I didn’t like cherries, but it turns out I just don’t like that artificial cherry flavour, the real deal are absolutely scrumptious. So I have the apprentice to thank for buying it and converting me.

Getting it home

It was already on a cane frame being trained as a fan. I re-potted it into a larger pot and stood it against a sunny wall. That first year we had quite a few fruits and they were delicious – so sweet!

The second year there were less fruits but we were still looking forward to a few sweet cherries. The pigeon though had other ideas! I think we were left with about half a dozen cherries after he’d finished.

Moving house

The following year we moved house and our cherry in a pot came with us. For a couple of years it was neglected, shoved around the garden with the rest of the pots as we stripped the garden back to its bare bones and started to landscape.

You can see it behind the green table, amongst the chaos!

With a long south facing boundary we set about building ‘The Great Wall’, intending to plant fruit trees along it.

Finally at the end of 2016 the wall was completed. The poor cherry that by now was producing very little fruit and looking quite sorry for itself, finally got planted in its new home.

You can just about see it behind all of the flowering plants. They were only planted there temporarily, whilst they waited for the rest of the garden to be finished.

That first year in the ground, it immediately started to look healthier producing a surprising amount of fruit. However this garden has even more birds than our last garden, so the pigeons were joined by the blackbirds who decided that they rather liked cherries too!

We lost most of the crop that year, so the following year we constructed a frame around it, covering it in netting.

Success, cherries!

Six years on and the cherry tree has gone from strength to strength, producing more and more delicious fruits each year.

We could tell this year was going to be a bumper crop with the amount of cherry blossom we had, back in April.

As the blossom faded the little tree was laden with tiny little fruits. We gave it a couple of soaks whilst the fruits were plumping.

The lovely warm weather we’ve had in resent weeks has been perfect for the ripening cherries, which has led to this week marking the start of the cherry harvest.

The only problem is, they do all tend to ripen in a short space of time.

To get around this problem we make cherry pie and cherry cake to freeze.

These are eaten for breakfast with yogurt, which certainly makes you want to get out of bed in a morning!

If you’d like my recipe, you can find it by clicking this link Cherry and Courgette cake.

Supporting wildlife

The cherry has attracted some fabulous wildlife. Luckily so far it’s creatures that don’t eat the precious cherries, just the leaves! Well at least now we have the netting protecting them from the birds and squirrels!

Last year we had a Vapourer moth caterpillar, which looks like it’s got some incredible Mohican haircut. When it finally turns into a moth, it’s a most disappointing brown colour.