I’ve only grown Montmorency sour cherries and White-Gold cherries. Both are very puny.
Do Bing cherries come out as big as they are in the store with no extra work?
Mine have and very sweet. But they’re much harder to grow and actually harvest fruit than the sour cherries.
I don’t believe Bing is well suited for the East. Lots of work has been done since it was first grown and there’s supposedly a lot of less crack prone varieties with similar fruit now, although I’ve yet to find a good sweet cherry that doesn’t tend to crack when it rains when it’s nearly ripe, even if it is described as crack resistant, which I’ve never seen Bing categorized as.
Cherries tend to be small when there is too much fruit in a cluster or just too many clusters, and rootstock has as much to do with that as variety. Commercial growers prune off a lot of the crop to assure they get size when the trees are over laden, as I understand it. When I have fruit I hand thin mine, but excessive rain when they were flowering ruined my crop this season. .
I myself grow Utah Giant. It does well here. It does crack easily though. But I find the cracked ones are just as sweet as those that do not crack. I never grew Bing. But will always grow Utah Giant here in Michigan. The cracks heal quickly. Looks bad tastes great.
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Good to know Drew. I have Utah Giant that is fruiting this year. Look forward to tasting it. Also give it a maximum security status against birds, squirrels and other 4 legged…
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