Cherry Tree-Colt or Gisela ?

[Tarragon565]

Colts sound easier to care for but how big do they get?

Depends what the scion is - Colt is less dwarfing than Gisela (so will do better on poor soil), but both rootstock and scion affect height.

So if I went for colt what rootstock should I go for if I don’t want it too big?

Semi vigorous?🤷‍♀️

Actually doesn’t seem to say anywhere. You just seem to be able to pick between colt or gisela

If you don’t want it too big then Gisela, think it runs approximately 40% reduction on Colt. Colt is a rootstock.

I bought a sunburst cherry today, always tempted to go bigger but restrained myself and went for Gisela so I can manage it easily.

An you prune them to keep smaller?

Colt is the rootstock, like @Jelliclecats says. After you pick your rootstock, you can then pick the type of cherry fruit you want (there are a couple of types of cherry that aren't usually grafted onto Gisela, but don't worry about that). If the type of cherry fruit (the 'scion') is naturally quite vigorous, it will combine with the rootstock and the ultimate vigour of the tree will be a combination of the two. So a vigorous cherry scion on a dwarfing rootstock will be bigger than a less vigorous scion on a dwarfing rootstock. There's a nice guide here: https://www.rhs.org.uk/fruit/cherries/grow-your-own

The other things to consider are what your site/soil are like, and how you want to prune. I'm in north yorkshire and have a couple of cherries I want to fan-train, so I've gone for Colt rootstocks there, because I want the extra vigour to cope with harsher growing conditions and the stress it puts on a tree to fan train it (ie., keep pruning it flat against a wall, which is great for getting nice ripe fruit, but puts more strain on the tree).

You absolutely can prune a cherry to keep it in check, but best to have a quick look at the RHS guide so that you prune the right way and get lots of lovely fruit.

Oh - and if you're only getting one, check it's self-fertile (they're not all).

https://www.jparkers.co.uk/cherry-sunburst-0005001c mine was from here and not knowing much about rootstock, I took the info at face value thinking it was a dwarfing kind (didn't take in the size details), so after 4/5 years, it's really grown too fast. I've lopped off about 2' off the main branches last month that are currently about 2.5 long and the whole tree stands about 7' tall. Although most of the fruit will be too tall for me to harvest later on.

@SarahAndQuack How can I prune this to ensure that I can control it's height more effectively?

Oh, and the fruits are very delicious though (the best I've ever had), but the damn wasps get to most of them.

@irridium, if I were planting a cherry as new, I'd plant against a wall and fan-train it. It's absolutely the best way to keep it small and in shape, and you can net the whole wall. But that's not that much help! Broadly, pruning a tree to keep it small and make it fruit is a balance. When you lop off whole branches or make dramatic cuts, the tree responds by thinking 'woah! I must really put out some growth next year!" So you often end up with vigorous, whippy growth (watershoots) that may not fruit so well. If you keep lopping the tree back, eventually it'll get tired and suffer or die.

I am not that expert at this! I would always follow the RHS guides (this one, for plums, is the same as for cherries: https://www.rhs.org.uk/fruit/plums/pruning). The key thing is that you want to do it gradually. You want to bring down the fruiting spurs into reach slowly, rather than lopping at it to produce leggy watershoots. As a rule of thumb, you never take off more than 1/3 of a tree's growth in a single pruning.

(Mind you, I have a morello, which I love, and which was trained into an inexpert but much loved fan. Unfortunately, it was trained up a wall where bluetits nested, and one year I acquired a pair of kittens. It was the birds or the tree, so I'm afraid I took a saw to the painstakingly-trained fan and reduced it to two ungainly stumps, cos needs must. It is still alive and actually looks none too shocked, and I took out well over 70% of the whole thing. So, you know ... they are quite hard to kill, cherries.)

I'm not sure if it's possible to re-site the tree to my 5' fence as there's other trees and shrubs there which will block out the light. I don't have another wall to move it, sadly. I heard from someone that you can weigh down the branches with rope and bricks or something heavy, but I wasn't sure how to do that when my tree is also in a middle of a flower bed. (Again, I am growing lots of plants in the same bed as no other space for anything else other than growing in pots.)