Minnie Royal on gisela 6, starting to color on April 2.
Edit: note the crack. Fruit damage hastens ripening.
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do you remember the reference you found for royal crimson/royal fran/6GM25 being s3s4’? I’m trying to update my database and I can’t find anything
I emailed dave wilson and asked.
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Governor Wood cherry set fruit. There are reports online that it was successful in North LA/Thousand Oaks. We had around 500 chill hours estimate this year in my yard, a better year than normal. Probably also important that we avoided the extreme hot days in January also.
These fruit were at the top and bloomed late. I did not think they would set as well as lower down where I saw more pollinators. But they set better (?).
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Minnie Royal cherry at a more coastal location than me. It did not set fruit, apparently due to pollination. Royal Crimson was the pollinator but was too far away and too young, they had to hand pollinate and it did not seem to work too well. Maybe if we add some grafts of other early bloomers it will do better.
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Royal Lee right next to a branch of Brooks. They seemed to cross-pollinate well and weathered the 99 degree heat 2 weeks ago.
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This was my Royal Lee pollinizer graft on Minnie Royal on Maxma 14. Only the early blossoms fruited (lower on the tree). The overlap is the challenge but at least it seemed to help generate fairly good fruit set on Minnie Royal.
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Burbank cherry keeps surprising me. First, that Burbank bred a cherry nobody even sells anymore. Second, that it flowers early. Third, that it fruited at all in San Diego. Now it is surprising me by seeming to be one of the first to color up.
Thanks to @RichSV for the good report a few years ago on this. And thanks to the redwood crfg for preserving it.
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I’m all for collecting multi-grafts but it seems like the real stars are your self-fertile types lapins and royal crimson, with all the pollination challenges you have. are there any other self-fertile varieties that might be low chill?
It’s worth exploring! I would say pollination is not the biggest barrier to fruit set here, but it is the biggest confounder. The confounder means I have to wonder - was this or that failure from chill or pollination?
This is my worst year for Royal Crimson, and it is mostly a bad year for Lapins. If they were not self-fertile I would wonder about pollination. The nice thing about self-fertile cultivars is they take that out of the equation. So yes, I should probably try them more. I suspect Royal Crimson over-cropped last year and is resting this year. I don’t know why Lapins did poorly on some trees and did decent on other trees. It did not do great on any trees. Thanks for your suggestions. I have Stella and Skeena but wont know for a few years how they will do. Let me know if you have any other suggestions!
yeah I actually don’t have suggestions, my gut feeling was that none of the summerland cherries (lapins stella skeena etc.) would be good candidates because they have 2500+ chill hours where they were bred, so lapins even doing halfway ok is surprising. so I just don’t know, you’re probably doing some of the first testing on some of these
Last week I ate my first Minnie Royal cherries from gisela rootstock (those are a week early) as well as Royal Crimson. Now we have yellowing and coloring up of Royal Lee, Brooks, Burbank, and Coral. Coral is shown below:
Bright red is not the correct color. It needed another week and needs to be much darker. It was not that good. This is why supermarket cherries can be disappointing. In your yard you can wait until the right time. I ate these early because my son was helping me bag cherries to protect against the birds, and he really wanted to try them early.
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Burbank cherry was not fully ripe either. I ate one because there are only a handful on a couple grafts, and critters might take them at any time. The cherry has a prominent peak. The flavor was good despite being picked too early. The stone was enormous relative to the fruit, which at least was an assurance that this cultivar, obtained during a scion exchange a few years ago, certainly traces back to the pre-commercial era and is more likely to be the correct identity. So far it appears to be one of my earliest cultivars, second after Minnie Royal, and I may try it as a pollinizer for MR.
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I was surprised to see early coloring of Black Tartarian, Black Republican, and Governor Wood cherries. There are only a couple cherries on the first 2 cultivars. Governor Wood has a decent fruit set. Here is Black Tartarian:
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Minnie Royal on gisela 6 was ripe today. It was amazingly good, and better than the majority of cultivars I have tasted. The only reason I have fully ripe MR this early is because I hand pollinated these blossoms.
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I’ve got the Minnie Royal and Royal Lee starting to ripen. There are a lot less cherries than I was hoping. I’m going to want to graft more varieties for next year.
Question. Can I air layer this to rootstock branch to create a new rootstock to graft on?
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The first ripe Minnie Royal on Maxma 14 rootstock was picked today. Brix 26. Far and away higher than the $20 a bowl supermarket cherries and actually quite a bit higher than even the good farmer’s market vendors. Nothing comes close to home grown. Sorry for the blur.
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I’m not much of an expert on air layering. Seems like worth trying! I wonder if you could scrape it and then lay it on the ground and just put a big rock on it and get roots that way, the easy way, since it is so close to the ground.
Is anyone else growing Stella successfully in SoCal? Lowes back in Feb had Compact Stella and Tartarian cherry trees for $5 each. I grabbed two Stellas and planted them. Some sites state its a low chill variety while other sites say it requires 700 hours?
Also seemed fishy to me that they sold Tartarians, apparently that needs 900 chill hours. How is anyone going to get that in SoCal?
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2nd graft of Burbank ripened, this was on Maxma 14 and ripened earlier than Royal Lee. This did not have the peak but had the same large stone. This fruit, at the very bottom of the tree, was acidic but still tasted good despite a brix reading of 18. I have been picking these a bit early to study them before the critters get them.
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