Thats an idea, my CJ’s are actually crowding my apple trees so I was going to remove 2 of the 4 this spring. I could cut them at the trunk and add on CP’s tho, just for fun. Any tips/tricks to grafting cherries? Ive done apples several times with great success…
Also does anyone know if you can clone CJ via root chunks? Will they throw up a sucker if separated from the main plant and replanted in a different location, kinda like raspberries do? I havent had good luck rooting softwood cuttings of CJ…
Derek, keep us updated on the cherries and peaches. We have little info for areas such as yours.
Do you grow currants? They would work well there. I have been making peach cobblers with all the extra peaches I have. Last week i decided to add currants instead of peaches, it blew away the peach cobblers. I much prefer tart fruits for cooking.
I also mixed currants with Carmine Jewel and made preserves, no doubt the taste test winner of all the jams i made this year.
I planted a Carmine Jewel, Evans, Meteor, and Lapins in 2008. Since that time I have gradually added more cherry bushes and trees. Out of all these, which are all growing fine, I have tasted exactly two Carmine Jewel cherries. I bought another piece of land with better soil, where I have planted a couple long rows of all the available Romance cherries. One of my home bushes has thrown up five suckers in a ten or fifteen foot line, too, that I plan to move next spring. One of these days I hope to have buckets full of cherries. After Saturday’s -25 degrees, that day may not be in 2017, but I keep hoping. I just hope the SWDs don’t dash my hopes! Tulle netting, maybe?
TheDerek,
Cherries are in general super easy to root from new growth soft wood cuttings. Out of the last batch of green wood cuttings that were leafed out of cherry I did I rooted over half. I took 6 inch cuttings that were all new growth and left two leaves on top and pulled the other leaves off. I used clonex rooting gel and dipped the bottom inch making sure at least two leaf nodules were in that spot. Rooted them in sand with a glass jar turned over them to control humidity and a grow light sitting on top of them. I’ve never done hardwood cuttings. I’m not sure what the propagation laws in the United States are about the prairie cherries but you need to find out before you root 100 of them… I can tell you I kill about 50 carmine Jewell suckers a year in my orchard to keep them under control. When they hit a certain age roughly year 6 on some of mine give or take depending on plants and location they start suckering profusely! Sour cherries are super easy to graft in general. I think montmorency is as easy to graft as apples or pears. Sweet cherries on the other hand have not been the easiest thing for me in Kansas. Technically I’m not supposed to grow sweet cherries at all because all the conditions are in favor of me failing at it. I did graft sweet cherries for practice last year and here is how I did it Sweet cherry grafts. There are people that graft sweet cherries all the time but as you know for those of us in less than perfect conditions sweet cherries are just a pet project for us. Back in 2014 these were the instructions I gave on another forum on rooting cuttings in a few threads. I should also say it’s always good to get a second opinion like this one Home Fruit Growing propagation or a third opinion because I only got 50% takes last time with cherries but of course that may depend on the cherries more so than my method. So here were the posts or responses. Note that in those days I used 3-4" of rooting gel which is really overkill but very effective. so only a couple of inches are sticking out. More area with buds dipped in rooting gel = more likelihood of rooting.
“I suspect your problem is humidity or in this case the lack of humidity. I have never rooted kiwi cuttings but I have grown them and have rooted lots of fruit tree cuttings. What I do is take a bunch of pots and fill them with moist sand. I mix the sand with perlite if I feel like it. Take a bunch of new green growth off of the kiwi in 6 inch pieces. Make sure it’s not old woody growth it needs to be the new green growth to root properly. Using clippers I would take off all leaves besides the top two. I would Dip the bottom 3-4” in clonex rooting gel. I would Take a pencil and poke a hole down in the sand and stick the cutting in firming the sand up around it. I would Make sure to wear gloves and don’t get the rooting gel on me. I would Get a bunch of glass jars and turn them over the cuttings and push down in the sand of the pots to control humidity similarly to the concept of using a mister. I would Lay the grow light or any fluorescent light on top of the jars. That method has worked for me to root a lot of different bushes and it takes roughly 8 weeks to develop roots."
" Yes 8-10 weeks until they root. You can see the roots coming out the bottom of the pot and then its time to pull the jarsI use that method during spring or summer when new growth is easy to come by. Maybe use a heat mat to warm them if I have new growth now and it’s getting cool inside where I start them. I don’t know that climate you live in. I always start my plants like that in a basement. I Keep the sand moist. That’s my method but I can’t advise you what to do but it works for me."
“You will need a 5 gallon bucket of sand, bottle of clonex rooting hormone, old jars, lots of pots. I fill a pot with sand and poke a pencil in it and make a hole, dip the cutting in rooting hormone and stick it in the damp sand… Push the sand in around the cutting. Stick the jar over the cutting in the sand to control humidity. When you have all the pots filled and covered lay a grow light on top of the jars. Typically within a couple of months you will have so many trees you wont know what to do with them. I prefer taking my cuttings from new growth in the spring and not dormant cuttings when I use this method. leave top two leaves on the cutting. This works for cherries etc… The sand allows roots to develop quickly.”
I took a couple softwood cuttings from the juliet I planted this last spring and they both rooted fairly easily/quickly, but none of my CJ’s rooted. Not sure what I did wrong, same hormone and technique…
From what I have read you can propagate canadian varieties as much as you want because they are not patented, but there is a TradeMark name so you cannot resell them using the same name… So you couldnt SELL Carmine Jewel as Carmine Jewel in the US, but you could sell it as a Canadian sour bush cherry.
I dont plan on selling any anyway, just like to mess around with cloning/grafting stuff, for my own entertainment.
I can’t imagine that -25F should phase the U Saskatchewan cherries. I would think -25F would be pretty close to or above the extreme minimum temperature for the Saskatoon region. But maybe there is someone who knows better than I.
I’ve never had leaf die-back on the cherries, but the blossoms (when there were any) didn’t develop into cherries, so I assume they froze in late frosts or were damaged in winter. Plenty of bees in the pears and strawberries each year, so I don’t think the issue is pollinators. Had a couple sweet cherry fruits set way up in the tree a couple times, but critters got them. The sweet cherries have only had a few occasional sparse blossoms. The meteor sour has been loaded with blossoms some springs, but the cherries don’t seem to mature. The soil is sandy and poor, but I have fertilized lightly in spring the past few years.
The -25 we had was after all trees were good and dormant. We had an unusually warm fall, but the cool down wasnt extreme and plants had plenty of time to drop their leaves as normal. Got my fingers crossed that my mulberry and peach survive. BTW I have a New Century asian pear that is amazingly hardy! It just started producing this year and has survived some brutal weather like a champ!
Well it’s kind of an old weather book I have - “The Climate of Canada”, but it lists the annual coldest night for Saskatoon as -39F, and the extreme minimum ever as -55F. Even accounting for warming since this book was published some 50 years ago, -25F is no big deal in a Saskatoon winter.
Still waiting to hear from Murky, Brady B or someone else on the wet side of PNW. I know they grow great on the prairies, but I don’t live on the prairies.
Thanks,
John S
PDX OR
The earthworms love the leaves too. I don’t worry about how pretty it looks so I just mulch deep every fall with leaves around my trees. I add wood chips and potassium in the spring.
It’s 14.0 degrees at 10:16 today, and it made me think of how blistering hot it was this summer when it was time for the CJ’s to be ripening, and to harvest them.
It’s set isn’t quite as firm as I like, but I cheated and used more cherries than called for. Should have added in a bit more Sure-Jell, but with a lesser amount of sugar it has a VERY nice cherry taste this time.
I also made a batch of ER and its set is perfect, but I did add about a 1/4 pack more.
I added red currants to mine, which are just loaded with pectin. Set was perfect. In general I do a 2 to 1 ratio 2 cups fruit, 1 cup sugar. I use the low/no sugar pectin, I add 1/4 cup of lime or lemon juice to help keep conditions acidic (and to balance sugar/acid ratio for best taste).
Directions call for 1 minute of a hard rolling boil, I usually test jam at that point to see if it will set, if not, I keep boiling. Not more than 3 minutes though. So far the jams have never failed to set. You need to mix continuously, you must reach a hard rolling boil for it to set. I reach the hard boil and lift pot off the burner, turn heat off, keep it just below a hard boil, yet still at a rolling boil. Test on plate, and either turn heat back on, or process jam if ready.
I have a hard time setting black raspberries for whatever reason? I started using the calcium gelling agent Pomona. Calcium gelling agents don’t require any sugar or pectin to gel. A great product. Also both these methods require less than 5 minutes cooking time, or close, so vitamins, and other complex proteins are not broken down, thus less nutrition is lost.
I love the taste of traditional jams and preserves, the no pectin, cook forever methods, but I also like the anti-cancer proteins to remain intact, so I never make it this way.
Family tastes tests declared the best jam/preserves this year was Carmine Jewel/red currant preserves. I removed pits, and seeds in the currants.
Second was boysenberry/tayberry jam (seeds removed). Third was white blackberry/yellow currant (seeds removed).
Last year Pineberries won, this year I mixed with regular strawberries and it was just ok. I didn’t like the color of pineberry only preserves, but the taste was superior. I may add cranberry or cherry juice for a better color next year, yet not enough to change taste, The color was a yellow brown, not attractive. Any suggestions welcome!
I’d read somewhere that if you boil longer than they state on the pectin that it can breakdown the pectin and it could have a reverse effect, so I’ve always been diligent to boil rapidly for exactly 1 min (or as close to as I’ve been able to determine when the fast boil started in the first place…)
But for all my close direction following I seem to sometimes think I know better, and when they call for EXACTLY 5 cups of cherries, if I have 5 1/2 thawed out… 5 1/2 goes in. (You can’t fix stupid…) Same with sugar, they say don’t mess with the amount or it’ can impact the set. I go less a bit anyway. Why am I surprised it sets less than I want??? I do usually get what I’m after if I just add a bit more than one pack of Sure-Jell though.
That current/cherry stuff sounds good. Wish I had some currents planted!
