Growing premium fresh sweet cherries since 1918
POLLINATION
There
is nothing more beautiful than a cherry orchard in full bloom. While it is
beautiful, this bloom is a very practical and key step in growing cherries. Cherry trees must be
pollinated to produce a crop. The pollination usually occurs in early
April. The first step in pollination is
having two varieties that will cross pollinate each other. In most of our
orchards, we have planted smaller numbers of a different variety amongst the
main variety. For example, we have van cherries planted every third tree
in every third row among our Bing cherry trees.
Next, there must be bees
present to carry the pollen of these pollinating trees to your main trees.
Relying on nature to provide enough bees during the critical time period is not
adequate. We hire professional bee keepers to bring bee hives in boxes to
our orchards. This is normally done at night when the temperatures are
cool and the bees are inactive. The addition of these bees usually
means success in the pollinating the crop.
Occasionally we have years
where the crop just does not pollinate well and we really don't have a good
explanation. It could be the timing of a warm or cold snap, or something
else we cannot account for. This can cause a very low production crop or
an irregular crop, where one tree or branch has set a large amount of cherries
and the next did not.
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