Help with Prunus Okame (flowering cherry)

uncle_rufus · 22 Apr 2015 at 12:16

Greetings!

Last autumn we planted a Prunus Okame sapling in our garden - it's not massive but not tiny either, say about 7ft to the top of the longest branches reaching up, trunk might be about an inch and a half thick... New build house so the soil is pretty poor, with lots of rubble and compacted clay, but we dug a decent hole and back-filled with a mixture of the original soil and some good quality stuff from the Garden center...

Anyway, by about mid-march we could see loads of little pink blossom buds appearing all over the branches and they were really looking good and like they were about to spring open, but they just never did, and have now shrivelled and gone all dry and brown... Reading up online I think probably we didn't water it well enough (we have watered it plenty but probably not "deep watering" so it may have been sucked up by the other plants/grass)

Since discovering this we've started "deep watering" it properly whenever the weather has been dry for several days, but there's no sign of any leaf buds so far and we're getting worried... The tree I think is still alive (if I make a tiny incision in the bark on the trunk and peel it back it's bright green and seems healthy)...

Anyone have any advice? Should it have leaf buds already? Should we pick off all of the dried buds a bit like dead-heading flowers to promote growth?

TL;DR - New cherry tree didn't blossom, suspected underwatering; tree seems alive but no leaves yet, what should we do?

bitslice · 22 Apr 2015 at 12:40

Just wait till next year, new trees need time to settle.

Producing buds takes a lot of energy, presumably the tree isn't up to it yet.

randal · 22 Apr 2015 at 12:49

We've got a 12ft flowering cherry in the front garden, probably 25 years old now. Our has just blossomed for 2 odd weeks, and shed it all for leaf.

Beautifully pretty tree for a couple of weeks, now driving the neighbours nuts. Next up, pollen season.

uncle_rufus · 22 Apr 2015 at 13:19

bitslice said:
Just wait till next year, new trees need time to settle.

Producing buds takes a lot of energy, presumably the tree isn't up to it yet.

That's reassuring - although does that mean it isn't going to grow any leaves at all this year? Surely it would have to in order to gather more energy for next year?

randal said:
We've got a 12ft flowering cherry in the front garden, probably 25 years old now. Our has just blossomed for 2 odd weeks, and shed it all for leaf.

Beautifully pretty tree for a couple of weeks, now driving the neighbours nuts. Next up, pollen season.

Haha - fine by me

I don't think our tree would drop much onto the neighbours' but we'll see (if it survives)

BigBoy · 22 Apr 2015 at 14:29

Had a frost whilst it was in bud?

uncle_rufus · 22 Apr 2015 at 14:43

BigBoy said:
Had a frost whilst it was in bud?

No I don't think so, South-West so been pretty mild here for a while

The only other thing someone at the Garden center said was possibly the buds had gotten "scorched" if we let water splash on them while the sun was out, but I'm pretty sure we didn't do that either... We do use a sprinkler sometimes on the grass but never until the end of the evening when the garden is all in shadow...

BigBoy · 22 Apr 2015 at 15:18

Could be scorching, not always from watering, can also be from the fluid the plants produce naturally.

uncle_rufus · 22 Apr 2015 at 15:41

If it would just grow some leaves it would be a huge relief... just any sort of sign that it's still okay...

Especially because I think the center we got it from do a guarantee of 1-year on any trees which means if it's definitely not going to recover we can get a replacement

Kaka · 22 Apr 2015 at 18:40

Give it time. It's better the tree used the energy to build a healthy and stronger root system than use it up on producing a few flowers. I planted my flowering cherry tree over a year ago and not much happened until just recently.

This was about 2 weeks ago.

This is what is looks like today.