Ornamental Cherry Tree dropping leaves

[Purplesage]

Hello Marb67.
Sorry to hear about your ornamental cherry tree. Im a relative newcomer to fruit trees but 2 of my cherry trees, one am Old Black Heart and a May Duke.
They both had very similar looking sick leaves although they started looking really healthy. I discovered little tiny black slug like creatures about a 8 mm long with a large head, I looked them up and it was something called cherry and pear slugworm. Apparently they don't affect the overall health of the tree but looks terrible! My pear trees also had the same. I think they are sawfly larva. I might be wrong but also can be treated by dusting the tree with wood ash and the slugworms dry up then drop off. Hope that helps.

[Marb67]

Hello Marb67.
Sorry to hear about your ornamental cherry tree. Im a relative newcomer to fruit trees but 2 of my cherry trees, one am Old Black Heart and a May Duke.
They both had very similar looking sick leaves although they started looking really healthy. I discovered little tiny black slug like creatures about a 8 mm long with a large head, I looked them up and it was something called cherry and pear slugworm. Apparently they don't affect the overall health of the tree but looks terrible! My pear trees also had the same. I think they are sawfly larva. I might be wrong but also can be treated by dusting the tree with wood ash and the slugworms dry up then drop off. Hope that helps.

That helps very much thanks as I have a wood burner with copious supply of ash. Funny enough, the Goosberry bushes are a couple of feet away from the tree.

So I am guessing you dust the tree trunk to stop them climbing ?

[Marb67]

Aaaand after all that it's going the same way again. Blotchy marks, yellowing, leaf miner and dropping early. In the main it's looking healthy but it won't be long before it looks terrible. Gutted!

[Andraste]

I'm no expert on cherry trees but yellow leaves are an indicator of a nutrient deficiency. It might be worth doing a soil test to see what you're working with to inform what is/isn't lacking. Yellow leaves can also be caused by too much/too little water but that seems more unlikely given it's well established.

Otherwise I'm thinking a google on potential diseases might be in order to see if that's causing your problem - if the growing conditions etc. are good then it might be that your cherry's defying the odds to keep itself going but just can't sustain the effort?