Twice Evans trees have died on me with nothing but the root stock coming back if I find one this late in the season hopefully the third time is the charm.
My Juliet is a good size bush about 6’ tall and on its 5th year but I’m yet to get much out of it. This year, it’s biggest effort, will be about a cup.
I have a small montmorency that while small it crops nicely. As it keeps growing it should become a solid performer.
I have a Romeo that has never given me a cherry but has made me around $300. It lost its top, grew back, and started sending sprouts all over the place which I keep potting and selling.
I think they are good, and I love the dark color. But they are small, and tough to pit. I still enjoy them a lot. I spent about 3 hours pitting the other day. You do have to work. I have been making cherry turnovers lately, soooo good! I love that light flaky, puffy dough. Just absolutely delicious. Last year I made some fruit leather with CJ and the favor was concentrated. It was excellent. I could not stop eating the leather. It took a super long time to dry. It has such a thick syrup that is dark and full of antioxidants.
Mine was slow too, you will get 2 gallons next year. I got a cup last year, and a stuffed 2 gallons this year. My tree is about 5x5 before it started producing well. Two years of just a handful.
Wowza produced a cup this year. Appear to ripen later than the others by a week or two. The flavor is excellent but the pits are oblong and rather big. The cherry is bigger than Juliet. But with the larger pit, is about the same yield per cherry.
First one is a shot of the cherries in the garage fridge (minus 10 gallons sold already) Total take so far is 34 gallons, and we’ll pick more as several are not ready just yet.
The picture of the bushes is to show relative size of CJ’s on the left, and Juliet on the right. For reference the fence is 5’. I took maybe 3-4’ off the bushes in March. There seems to be about 2-3’ new growth on all bushes.
It looks like a total of five bushes, but there are two more CJ’s behind the three on the left. The CJ’s were planted in '11 & '12 while the Juliet’s were planted in '16.
Love the taste of the Juliet, but I agree with the common refrain about them being somewhat stingy. I don’t believe they will ever rival CJ’s production.