Detailed Guide to High-Yield Cultivation Techniques for Black Pearl Cherry
Black Pearl cherry is a bud-sport superior cherry selected from Chinese cherry cultivation, with attractive fruit shape and purple-red fruit color. It is a premium fruit on the market, sells at a higher price than ordinary fruits, and has good commercial value. Below is an introduction to the high-yield cultivation techniques for Black Pearl cherry!
I. Orchard Site Selection
Black Pearl cherry likes sunlight, is not tolerant of waterlogging and not drought-resistant. It is best to choose a sloping site with good sunlight, good drainage and relatively deep soil for orchard establishment, with sandy loam of pH 6 to 7 being optimal. If the orchard is established on flat land or clay soil, attention should be paid to ditching for drainage and soil improvement. One month before planting, trenches 80 to 100 cm wide and 60 to 80 cm deep can be opened along the planting rows for soil improvement, with weeds, crop straw, phosphate fertilizer, pig and chicken manure slurry, etc. pressed in layer by layer. Alternatively, planting can first be done according to the designed density, and then the planting holes can be expanded and the soil improved year by year.
II. Seedling Planting
Planting can be done from September each year to February of the following year, but planting during the mild "Indian summer" weather from October to November is best. Use dwarfing and close planting, with a spacing of 1.5 × 3.0 m between plants and rows (150 plants per mu). Black Pearl cherry has a high self-fruiting rate and does not necessarily require pollinizer trees, but in order to obtain more reliable yields, pollinizer trees can be planted at a ratio of 1:8. At present, the main pollinizer variety is Dahongpao cherry. When planting, the settling water should be sufficient and thoroughly watered. After it has fully seeped in, scatter a layer of fine soil on the tree disk, and finally cover the tree disk within a diameter of 1.0 m with weeds (2 to 5 cm thick) to maintain soil moisture.
III. Training and Pruning
During the young tree stage, summer pruning should be the main practice. Vigorous branches can be pinched and bent in summer to promote branching and form medium and short branches. In winter pruning, long-release should be the main method to promote more bouquet-like fruiting branches. For high-yielding trees, winter pruning should be the main practice, using thinning and renewal pruning to improve light and ventilation conditions in the tree canopy, so as to achieve sparse outside but not sparse inside and three-dimensional fruiting. Short-prune and renew weak branches, renew and cut back old large branches, and at the same time cut back branches extending into the row space so as to maintain a ventilation and light-transmitting belt of about 80 cm between rows. For inner water sprouts, retain them appropriately according to the situation, twist and pinch them in summer, and train them into renewal branches. In addition, cherry buds are solitary, so when doing heading-back pruning, be sure to select a leaf bud as the cut-end bud.
IV. Fertilizer and Water Management
Black Pearl cherry young trees grow quickly and are very easy to flower. In order to bear fruit early and achieve high yield, fertilizer and water management should be strengthened in the year of planting so that a high-yielding canopy forms rapidly and growth stops before July, so as to complete flower bud differentiation as soon as possible. Close-planted orchards enter the high-yield period in the third year, and the amount of nitrogen fertilizer should be appropriately controlled while increasing phosphorus and potassium fertilizer. The orchard should be shallow-cultivated once each winter. Weeds between rows should be controlled with herbicide 2 to 3 times each year from March to October. From March to April, cover the tree disks and between rows with weeds or crop straw. During 5 consecutive days of drought, irrigate appropriately to keep the soil moist so as to reduce fruit cracking.
The above is Tuliu.com's introduction to the high-yield cultivation techniques for Black Pearl cherry. During cultivation, attention should also be paid to the prevention and control of pests and diseases. The main diseases of Black Pearl cherry include leaf spot, shot hole disease, dieback and brown rot; the main insect pests include peach fruit moth, peach leaf-curling aphid, white peach scale, and Phalera flavescens, which can be controlled with pesticides such as fenpropathrin, imidacloprid, methidathion, and fenpropathrin respectively.