Mine leafed out then died too. I grafted a scion of it to a Stella tree, it never leafed out, dead too along with Craig’s Crimson another weak cherry strain. On the other hand, I grafted a scion called Burbank Cherry to my Coral Champagne this season from CRFG exchange in Concord CA. It is thriving with seven cherries turning color. Photos to follow. All of my other non cherry fruit tree types are doing well with good to excellent fruit production, cherries are laggards, slow growth. lack of fruit production. Something could be wrong with my soil.
What rootstock are your cherries on?
Wickson (1921): Originated by Luther Burbank; a seedling of Early Purple Guigne and sold in 1903 to a group of Vacaville growers. Very early, earlier than its parent variety. Large, rich deep crimson, resembling Black Tartarian in quality. Tree medium upright grower, large leaves, prolific.
Howard (1945): Selected by Burbank, 1903. Seedling of Early Purple Guigne. Wickson calls it the Early Burbank. Very early. An important shipping variety in California for nearly forty years. Now on the wane, but still found in all important markets.
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The rootstock for Royal Crimson is Mazzard, it is still alive as shown in photo. Coral was from Costco, grown by Burchell Nursery on its third leaf in ground.
I had to tie the graft to the branch above to prevent breakage.
Dead Royal Crimson graft to the right.
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Update on the Royal Crimson (6GM25)… January 2019 the variety has been advanced to the commercial grower market and given the commercial name Royal Fran.
Please let me introduce myself, my name is Steve Huffman and I’m new to this forum and new to Dave Wilson Nursery with a sales position in the Commercial Grower Department. My sales territory is the Southern Central Valley (south of the 198). I live in Bakersfield. The items in my product line up are Almonds, Walnuts, Pistachios and Cherries! I’m very excited about low-chill cherries for my area. shuffman@davewilson.com
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Steve,
I’m hoping to see Colt offered as a cherry rootstock for Home Orchards in southern CA. It’s a far better performer for our soils.
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I’ll send a note to the production team to add Colt to their home garden line up. Do you know of Tom Spellman? I’ll send him a note too.
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Hi Steve,
Welcome! Good to see folks from DWN taking active interest in our forum!
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Thank you Vinod!
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As an owner of a dead Royal Crimson, very sad, do I have to BUY a new one to try it again? My Craigs’ Crimson died last season, none of them ever produced any cherries. My climate is very suitable for growing sweet cherries, Santa Clara Valley CA.
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Royal Crimson still shows up in the retail on line catalog as
RC. There is no Royal Fan listed in the commercial on line catalog.
I just looked.
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Hi! I am a novice gardener that went a little crazy and planted about 50 fruit trees on my property near Lake San Marcos, CA (North County SD). I wanted to share my experience with this one, even though I haven’t had great success with it. I planted it in Spring of ‘17 as a “whip”, straight into my clay soil with no amendments. Was the last one I could find in SD County. Irrigation is with a coil of netafim drip 2X a week for 45 min. I am trying to keep most of the trees very small with aggressive pruning but put this in a location where hopes it could serve as a fruiting shade tree. I topped it at about 5’ and then topped up he shoots that came out to try to encourage more branches. Only got 2 or 3 blossoms this year and no fruit.
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The new growth is beautiful! Congrats Mark!
If you havn’t already, I would hit it right now with Scotts Super Bloom. Ideally applied in June, but go ahead and apply. I like to apply either early a.m. or after the sun goes down, with soil that’s already moist. I never like to apply any fertilizer with dry soil.
I believe this product will give you more blooms and more fruit. Give it to all your fruit trees.
Also for maximum growth, for a future shade tree, always keep in mind, feed the roots. I like to give worm castings and Mycorrhizae (Mykos brand) and put a thick layer of mulch.
In bare root season, be on the look out for LeahCot, they are a fantastic apricot!
Happy gardening!
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How is your RC doing?
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Mine leafed out after planting bare root January 2023 but doesn’t seem very vigorous.
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Best wishes, @Martin !
I have southern CA colleagues in USDA 9b (hits upper 20’s F every winter) who just love it.
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We are unhappy with our low-chill cherries’ remarkably low vigor, Royal Crimson and Royal Lee. They have been in the ground for two years now and they have barely grown. We have two Royal Crimsons, and one of them has had chronic and persistent sap leaking from where we first trimmed it two years ago. We haven’t had any fruit yet but we might pull these out very soon. They are on a slope, drainage isn’t a problem. We have a healthy cherry tree on our property (Craig’s Crimson—fantastic fruit, but needs a little more chill than we often get) so I think our conditions and soil are not likely the issue.
These are on dwarf rootstock, which is all we could find.
Wondering if folks using non-dwarfing rootstock have had better luck. These new releases seem like duds to me.
We are in an area where it’s not uncommon to receive less than 200 chill hours, so we will likely replace with low-chill plums rather than with cherries, which tend to need more chill hours.
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@MaracujA
I had great success with Royal Crimson and Royal Lee, both on Colt rootstock in western Rancho Peñasquitos CA. The chill hours there are between 250 and 350. They are still producing.
I planted them both at my present location in NW Vista CA about 10 years ago. The chill hours here are typically less than 200, about 120 in recent years. They failed to produce more than a few fruits after several years and I took them out.
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