How to Plant Cherry Trees From a Seed

There are two types of cherries: sweet and sour. They're distinguished, just as the names suggest, by the distinctive tastes of the fruit. Both varieties of cherry tree can be grown from seeds (otherwise known as cherry pits). The trees grow to be between eight and 30 feet tall, depending on whether they're dwarf, semi-dwarf or full-sized. While it is possible to sprout a cherry tree in a pot, planting them outside is highly recommended if you hope to get any fruit from them---large trees grown in pots tend to have stunted growth and little if any production.

Things You'll Need

• Lidded jar
• Peat moss or vermiculite
• Spray bottle
• Sand
• 1-foot-by-1-foot piece of chicken wire

Instructions

1. Remove the cherry seeds (pits) from the cherries. Wash any pulp away from the seeds in lukewarm water.

2. Fill a dark-colored jar about halfway with water-moistened peat moss or vermiculite. Place your cherry pits inside the jar, too, then sprinkle a couple of inches of moss or vermiculite on top of them. Loosely cover the jar with its lid.

3. Refrigerate the cherry pits for at least eight weeks at a temperature of 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Periodically re-moisten the vermiculite or moss bedding material with water from a spray bottle---it should never be soaking wet, just damp.

4. Plant the cherry pit outside once all danger of a hard frost has passed. Plant several pits together in the same hole, as the seeds don't always sprout. (Or, they may take a very long time to sprout.) Plant the pits twice as deep as they are large. For example, if the pits are each 1/4-inch across, plant them 1/2-inch deep.

5. Cover the planted pits with sand to help keep soil from caking over them and prevent germination. Bend the 1-foot-by-1-foot piece of chicken wire into the shape of a shallow box and place this carefully over where you planted the seeds. Once you press the edges of the box into the soil, there should still be at least an inch or two between the soil's surface and the chicken wire, so that your cherry pits have room to begin sprouting. The chicken wire will help keep squirrels and other pests from digging your cherry pits up.

6. Keep the sand and soil around the cherry pits damp, but not soaked, as you wait for them to germinate. This takes some patience---while you may see results within a couple of months, some gardeners have reported that their cherry pits took up to a year to actually germinate and produce sprouts.

Tips & Warnings

• Expect to wait between five and 10 years, depending on the species of cherry tree you're growing, before the tree produces fruit.

References

• Online Tips
• The Gardener's Network
• New Mexico State University

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish