Callery are good rootstocks when used correctly. Why anyone raised multiple strains is beyond my understanding because that makes the seeds fertile. The reason they raised new strains was because it corrects the branch breaking problem.
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Al the nurseries were told they were sterile and could not reproduce. NOW they realized they were wrong. These Bradford pear type trees are EVERYWHERE!! Every neighborhood has them. Rows and rows of them along roadways, streets, parks in some cities. It turned into a mess.
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Interesting. My single CJ was planted in 2011 and has yielded heavily for the past 2 years (30 lbs or more fruit per year), but I’m not seeing any signs of suckering yet. Maybe that is yet to come? Maybe it is due to climate? (I’m Cdn zone 3a - we still have a good foot of snow on the ground, have been snow-covered since early November).
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@Don3a,
Mine showed no signs until they were older but they will do it eventually. The suckers start coming up just like they do with a bounty or goose plum thicket as @Auburn mentioned above with Chickasaw plums. Many mentioned them growing to well but CJ are actually needing lots of attention until they are over 3 years old. They are weak youngsters that need lots of TLC but aggressive adults that produce excellent cherries by the bucketfuls!
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How long does it typically take for new cuttings to start bearing fruit? My CJ barely grew year one.
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They grow very slowly the first 2- 3 years in the ground. The 3rd, 4th & 5th years they grow quickly. Typically they produce cherries in the 5th or 6th year though they can and have in the 4th year. It can be the 6th or 7th year when they produce good if you purchase them as 3 inch plugs. Weather and other things are a factor. If you want to know all about them see this thread Carmine Jewell Cherry Yields increasing with age
So, by the looks of your timeline, the transplanted suckers should be 3 years old this spring - how are they doing? My Oldest CJ is 10 this year and has a number of suckers. I want to try to do similar to what you did - but does it work? I have one sucker that came up nearly 10 ft away and has grown incredibly, I am letting it go. This is the 2nd year and a lot of growth, no blooms while the parent is huge! If you have pics of your transplants - would love to see!
Actually I think the ‘Bradford’ is probably sterile. But, “Cleveland Select” is not; nor are most of the others. (And it’s definitely too late to put the genie back in the bottle!)
*Further, as a ‘Bradford’ died or snapped at the graft…the rootstocks sprouted and became seedling trees…and thus
the crosspollination began!
My carmine jewel was imported from Canada to the US the first year you could do that, so it’s fairly old now. It never suckered until this spring. I think that’s because I pruned it back very heavily last year. I have mixed feelings about the suckers. They are mostly in my lawn, so I suppose the lawnmower will take care of them. But I hope the thing doesn’t become invasive.
I think that is what happened and then it became a big problem. Either that or the Bradfords have muted over the years and are now also part of the problem. I know the Bradfords, but probably the Cleveland varieties, became THE tree all the nurseries and cities started using to put in the parks playgrounds, city buildings, and along the mediums they put in.
We had them in an office building I was in back in the early 80’s. I believe that was when I started noticing them being planted in about every new building that was built then. They became too common of a tree since they were put everywhere. Now we are paying the price.
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Are the cherries themselves comparable to sweet cherries in taste?
They are sour by nature being 4x hybrid and recombination of of Sweet P.Avium and Mongolia cherry P. Frutcosa.
They have a gene pattern of AFFF or 25% sweet 75% Mongolian
a Sour cherry has a gene pattern of AAFF.
There sugar content can be as high as many sweet cherrys but the sourness masks that aspect.
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I’ve only eaten one or two, because the birds and chipmunks get them before they ripen. (But I have a new cage this year – hope springs eternal) But those I’ve eaten did not have the striking “cherryness” of a good cherry – not of either a sweet cherry nor a typical sour cherry. I was pretty disappointed.
Note that the very tastiest cherry I’ve had was a black cherry. There were some giant mature trees where I lived in Princeton, and they dropped a few ripe fruits each year. The flesh was only a couple mm thick over the large stone, and it wasn’t very sweet. It was a little bitter, in fact. But oh, the flavor! The cherryness of it. Yum! I wish i could get those again.
The flavor of my carmine jewel was fine, in a bland, sweet & sour way. But nothing to get excited about. Maybe they are better fully ripe?
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Too bad, I would have tried these sooner or later but sourness is a no no to my taste buds. The cherries in the tree I have here taste like cranberries. Not what I was hoping for.
I guess they’d need to add more P. avium genes in the mix. Zone 5 sweet cherries exist already so maybe one day.
Whereas I LOVE sour fruit. In fact, I keep unsweetened freeze-dried cranberries around to add to my breakfast cereal. (they are also super in muffins, but need to be soaked briefly, first.) All my favorite apples are sour. (usually with a lot of sugar, too.) In fact, my mom tells me that when I was a toddler, they would give me their lemon slices at restaurants, because I liked to eat them.
So I was mostly disappointed that these lack flavor intensity.
Sour cherries are the processing cash crop. Almost nothing is made with sweet cherries there virtually all eaten fresh. University of Saskatchewan in Canada’s goal is a more cold hardy sour cherry. They did truly succeed in raising the sugar level over standard sour cherry but you can just taste sour stronger then sweet. Sweet cherry has to be one of the most unique tastes in nature. Only one other fruit I have read about is supposed to taste like a red sweet cherry, let alone a yellow one.
Lets also give a shout out the other unicorn fruit. The Avium Cherry plum hybrid. Plum dominates cherry.
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Haha, lemon is extreme. I love sour apples as well but they also have some fruitiness to them. Which hardiness zone are you at? You might find the flavor profile in some other variety. I was under the impression that these Canadian ones were the sweetest so I might not add another tree.
I was surprised to see they had succeeded in making that plum cross. I would have thought they’re too distant relatives.
I think the only route to a truly sweet sour cherry (if it can be called that at that point) would be crossing with tetraploid sweet cherries. You of course lose some hardiness in the process but some hybrids are already out there. It’s always a compromise.
There is a name for AAAF its Duke Cherries. Several dozen cultivars where develop one study compared 39 with sweet and sours to just to standardize morphology. But at the end of the day Duke’s are not as popular since the average consumer wants there cherry to be sweet or sour not quasi middle ground.
The Nadia was 1 of 5 successful crosses out of 200 seeds collected.
The commonality with these fruits is they all originality from crosses of market ready fruits. I bet you just about every duke cherry is 1 or 2 gen removed from Montmorency.
Nadia is a cross of Black Amber a perfectly good black plum with amber flesh for those crates of black plums, no one on the forum would eat, and an Australian cultivar supreme.
If I where doing it I would find a cherry that over express’s flavor components and cross it with a honey plum like Shiro,
Im sure U o S selected for the highest sugar content Mongolian cherry first before crossing it with sweet. otherwise they would not have gotten that much suger from 3 sets of Mongolian genes.
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Did you pick them when they were very dark? They are at their best flavor when very dark. I have about 25 Carmine Jewel that we planted 5-6 years ago. Planning to sever the suckers from the mother this spring and dig them up in the fall to replant. The suckers are great if you want extra bushes (or trees depending on how you do or don’t prune), and they are nothing that a lawn mower can’t take care of.