Early this year, I was at one of the warehouse-type discount stores, and saw some snow fountain cherry trees in 20-gallon containers for a very good price. I figured "Why not?", because I wanted to put some trees in a park strip anyway.
Well, they did quite well for the first 3 or 4 months. But last month, one declined and died. Now, the other two are following the same pattern. Here's what's going on:
The actual tree trunks (to which they've attached the cherry grafts) are alive and thriving, while the actual cherry grafts are slowly drying up, going brown, and dying. The actual trunks are putting out stems and leaves quite happily - but they aren't, of course, cherry stems! I've made sure that the watering is appropriate, but because the trunks are doing so well, I'm a bit baffled.
Does this sort of thing mean that I got bad trees from the start, or are there environmental/care-related factors that would cause the graft to die while not the trunk?
steve