Cherry tree not growing

philanderson213

Earlier this year In January I bought and planted a Stella Cherry on gizella rootstock tree from my local garden centre. At about the expected time some of the buds started opening. Although only two buds produced any blossom. Some of the remaining buds started producing leaves, but then everything stopped.  No more buds opened and the leaves that did start to grow have stayed the same size for the last 4 weeks.  It doesn't look dead but it's growth seems to be frozen. tIt's in a relatively sunny south east facing corner, I've watered it regularly since mid March ish, and because my garden is tiny, am growing it in the largest pot the garden centre sold in a mixture of no. 3 and tree and shrub compost. I'm hoping this is temporarily and as a result of the extreme cold weather in April but look for thoughts on whether it might or might not recover.  I've attached a picture which shows what the tree has looked like for the past 4 weeks. I would appreciate some advice.

robairdmacraignil

Cold weather has slowed down growth on a lot of plants here and led to a bit less damage from the late frosts we have got. Not sure what sort of growth rate you are expecting but I find a newly planted tree or shrub can take a year or two to settle in a new position before starting to grow properly and growth in a container is always likely to be more restricted compared to a plant free to spread its roots in the open ground. Also would not be surprised by something newly planted not having the level of blooming you might get with a more mature plant.

It looks like a young tree and it is likely to be putting more effort now in to getting its root system settled. I don't think watering regularly without checking how wet the soil in the pot is would be a good idea and find plants in a container usually do better if they get a chance to dry out a bit before getting watered. With the current amount of leaves it has I doubt it would need a huge amount of water and the rain we are getting currently would be sufficient here. I would try remove the bamboo when the weather gets a bit calmer as these tightly bound supports are only intended for short term use on young plants.

philanderson213

Many thanks for your thoughts, which align with what I was thinking. In terms of what I was expecting, I was expecting most of the buds to have open by mid May and for the leaves that were 3cm long 4 weeks ago to be longer than 3cm now.

robairdmacraignil

Living things tend to react to their surroundings so a slow down in growth sounds fairly normal to me with the weather we have had so far this year. Even some of the established ash and beech trees are only just starting to sprout leaves here.

philanderson213

Cherry tree now looks like this. All leaves withered and brown.  Is there any coming back from this. It looks dead to me?