Every hobby gardener has probably asked themselves whether you could grow a cherry tree from the pit of the delicious cherry you just ate that would bear the same delicious fruit.
Can you grow a cherry tree from a cherry pit?
To grow a cherry tree from a pit, pits should be stored cool in the garden or in moist gravel/sand in late autumn. After cold treatment, they can be planted outdoors in spring. However, there is no guarantee that the fruit properties will be identical.
What you should know about propagating fruit trees
Basically, it is conceivable to grow a cherry tree from a cherry stone. It is more than uncertain whether this tree will bear the same fruit, how it will react to fungal attack and whether an early or late variety will develop from the kernel.
In order to avoid this risk, cherry trees are propagated in practice through grafting. Another part of the tree (“scion”) is grafted onto a rooted part of the tree (“rootstock”). You cut the scion from a cherry tree whose characteristics you want to preserve.
Growing cherry stones
In order to get the cherry stones to germinate, you have to subject them to cold treatment - as in nature. For this purpose, several seeds are buried in the garden in late autumn and allowed to overwinter in the ground. Another option is to store the cherry stones in containers with moist gravel or sand in a cool, but frost-free place. Both are intended to cause the shell to soften at the end of winter so that the seeds can germinate. The seedlings are separated and planted in a seedbed.
If this method seems too tedious, you can try cracking the harvested cherry stones carefully so that the inside remains intact. The seeds, which have been freed from the hard outer shell, are placed in a little water for a few days to pre-germinate (preferably in the refrigerator) and the resulting seedlings are planted outdoors in spring. However, there is no guarantee that the cherry stones will actually germinate, so take several kernels as a precaution.
Tips & Tricks
Sex is always a risk, even with plants. Such a tree grown from the cherry stone is a child of two parents; both endow it with their genes. Due to the division of chromosomes and the recombination - similar to human children - you simply never know what the outcome will be.
