mroot
January 26, 2025, 5:13pm
3
I don’t have an answer to your question but in North Carolina don’t you get 800 hours of chill or more?
Sweet cherries are tough to grow in the East do you have any experience with sweet cherries? You can do it but it isn’t easy and you probably want to know what you’re up against before you buy a sweet cherry tree. These threads you might find helpful.
If your not in an area that grows sweet cherries commercially sweet cherries are tough. Are you prepared to spray for brown rot? Are you prepared to put up scare tape or net your trees? If not your probably better off planting something else.
Under Eastern Conditions here are some cultivars you might try.
Blackgold self-fertile, very late bloomer which is good for late frosts but blooms too late to pollinate many other sweet cherries, crack resistant
Whitegold self-fertile, yellow with red…
I have quite a few cherry trees here and looking to graft or replace a couple losers. Wanted to revive this thread to see what has done well or not well for the eastern cherry growers.
From what has fruited here the Cornel varieties and the soft varieties like Black Tartarian have somewhat done well for me. Rot hits them, but not out of control.
LAPINS is on it’s way out. Has not set a single fruit and has radically uncontrollable growth. It’s not something you are going to keep small.
BING …
Here are some posts on how Royal Rainier does in low chill areas, mainly in California. Also some info on low chill sweet cherries. I added the links below.
I would highly recommend Royal Rainier. In San Jose, it has reliably ripened cherries in both low chill and high chill winters. I was told Rainier doesn’t reliably set fruit in low chill years but I don’t have personal experience. I have compared Royal Rainier from my tree with Rainier from Andy’s orchard and other U-picks in Brentwood and I can’t tell the difference. If anything, Royal Rainier is more crisp
Top disappointments in So Cal fruit for me, 2024:
Lapins cherry. Reputedly low chill, it blooms pretty late for me and never sets much fruit. It is not as good as Bing. I think it is just self-fertile and therefore looks low chill to some. In my opinion it isn’t, and is not worth trying in inland Southern California.
Royal Rainier cherry. Don’t get me wrong, it is good. It just blooms late and has not fruited much for me. I had a lot of test grafts too. You may be able to get some fruit, a…
Here are the results of my cherry experiments in low chill inland San Diego. Some of these are just grafts and I am extrapolating. My conclusions are much less certain than for peaches and apricots since cherries do not generate full crops for several years, and pollination in So Cal is unreliable given the erratic bloom.
English Morello
Bloom: Mid-April to mid-May
Harvest: pending
Quantity: abundant
Comment: This specimen on Gisela 5 from Raintree was planted last year. It is in my “zone 1…
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