Black Gold cherry, my view

[Mpigg]

Those white golds are beautiful. I look forward to the taste test report.

[mamuang]

@Mrs.G,
Did those cherries have firn texture? Black Gold is not firm, but not as soft as Romance cherries. They are not very sweet, either. Brix was consistently at 15.

@Mpigg,
White Gold is a bit firmer. Though they have the same brix, I prefer White Gold to Black Gold. Wish I planted it instead of Black Gold.

I also tried Utah Giant and Sweet Heart. Both had firmer texture than W&B Gold. All about the same sweetness.

Sweet Heart tasted good but was prone to cracking. All of mine, under the same condition as other varieties, all cracked.

Of these 4, Utah Giant would be my choice, larger and darker than Sweete Heart and Black Gold. Good texture and taste. White Gold would be my 2nd choice.

[mamuang]

Here is the pic. Left to right:
Black Gold, Utah Giant and Unknown (thought it was Sweet Heart but it is not. I lost the label). You can see the crack at the bottom of It. All cracked like that.
(Forgot to have White Gold in the line up)

[mrsg47]

No they were not hard, but creamy, really sweet and good!

[minnie]

After looking at your BG, I would like to grow cherry trees. I like firm and sweet tree. I was looking at lapins and rainier. Do you have any recommendation what varieties I should get? Thank you.

[mamuang]

@Minnie,
Where are you located?

Knowing a location will give us some idea how much pest pressure you will have and what variety could do well for you.

[minnie]

Hi Mamuang, I am living in zone 7a/6b in Philadelphia.

[mamuang]

@minnie,
Have you seen this thread?

Sweet Cherries 2017

They might not be up to par with grocery store cherries but at $8/lb I can only buy so many

It is a good read as these are members’s actual experience growing cherries. Please pay more attention to growers in the east coast.

@scottfsmith is probably more experienced than most with years of growing cherries and number of varieties.

I also hope @Moley will chime in as I have not heard much input from those growing the Pearl series.

I have seen people praising Lapins. I don’t know how well Rainier will do in PA. White Gold is a good choice for the east and is similar to Rainier.

Cherry is not easy to grow in the east coast. Good luck.

[Drew51]

I harvested my White Gold yesterday. A little over 7 pounds. Average brix was about 18 ranging from 15 to 19. The 19’s were very sweet for White Gold. Still a great producer, although cherries are fairly tart. Some years only a brix of 14.

Another problem is the color. Processed they look yellow to brown, not appealing at all. I usually just dry them and snack on them. They look terrible. This year I’m making a White Gold cherry-Indian Free peach jam. The IF peach is deep red and will make for a nice color jam. In my berry cookbook is a white cherry- peach jam. I need to check that out.
A couple years ago I made a Indian Free preserves and it was very good.

[mamuang]

Those looked very nice, Drew.

“although cherries are fairly tart”. Are you sure you talked about White Gold?

Mine was sweet enough and had no hint of tartness. Granted I had only a dozen WG cherries this year. The texture of my WG was firmer than my BG. If I were to choose between the two, I would choose WG.

Here was the line up of my cherries this year.

[mrsg47]

Beautiful, Mam! You are such a good grower and your fruit is always beautiful.

[Drew51]

Are you sure you talked about White Gold?

Well in relation to being sweet cherries I felt they have more tartness than most. Not comparing to actual tart cherries. Like Utah Giant has a lot less tartness. You have to try hard to notice any. There is some acid there, but very little. The way my tree is the north side does not get much light, and the cherries there are quite tart. My wife won’t eat them fresh, too tart for her. I myself believe the self fertile gene taken from tart cherries came with tartness. It’s too close to the first cross with tart cherries (Stella) which is one of it’s parents.

[scottfsmith]

My WG are not tart at all if they ripen fully, but they do seem to keep tartness longer than most varieties and the not fully ripened ones are not so fun to eat.

I had some great White Golds this year. But I didn’t do as well on the red ones as the birds and squirrels had clued in by then. I got about half my Montmorency crop and a fifth of my Regina crop.

[mamuang]

I tend to leave my cherries alone for a long time so I have not detect tartness in WG.

@scottfsmith - what is the best overall sweet cherries for you?
I may plant another one as people around me like them a lot. I am leaning toward Utah Giant or WG. Too bad, no one really gives reviews on the Pearl series.

@Drew51 - everywhere I read says Stella is a sweet cherry, not tart.

[Drew51]

everywhere I read says Stella is a sweet cherry, not tart.

Yes, the first self fertile sweet cherry. The self fertile coming from tart cherries. Or so I thought. Looks like it comes from radiating pollen from Napoleon. The pollen produced three self fertile trees. One of them was used to produce Stella.
Well I guess I need to let White Gold hang longer here, on the north side. Most were sweet but as Scott mentioned the under ripe ones are quite sour. I seem to have a problem of uneven ripeness. I’m afraid waiting longer will result in rotten cherries. They were starting to shows signs of being over ripe, but not on the north side. I will use those for processing in the future.

[scottfsmith]

what is the best overall sweet cherries for you?

I have not grown that many varieties so am not of strong opinions. I tried several obscure older varieties but had problems setting on all but Early Purple Guigne. That one I would say is very good though. I would have had a fair amount this year except the tree was not quite high enough and the deer enjoyed most. The few I ate were excellent. Black Tartarian is also excellent for me; it has not set much but is in a really low-light spot and I expect it will set more in the future. Regina needs to hang a long time or they are not good, and by the time they are ripe the birds have taken them… they are red colored for too long. So I am not super keen on it even though it is good in ever other respect. All the older cherries are less crunchy and many people don’t like non-crunchy cherries (similar to apples - modern varieties and tastes are crunchy, older varieties generally not crunchy). But the non-crunchy ones are less prone to cracking and to me they also taste better.

[mamuang]

@scottfsmith
Thank you for you input. @thecityman also has given a strong endorsement for Black Tartarian. However, my neighbor planted two of them for six years, they never set a single fruit. She cut them down last year. She bought her from a big box store so I don’t know if both were mislabeled.

I am one of those who like crunchy fruit. I hope to find a cherry variety that is firmer than BG that tastes good and crack resistance. Maybe, I am asking too much .

[scottfsmith]

Regina is excellent in terms of firmness, taste, and crack resistance. You just need to make sure to let them hang and keep the birds off.

[mamuang]

Great to hear. I am surprised that we don’t hear much about Regina. Often, it’s only BG, WG and Black Tartarian.

We have made a pretty good PVC pipe structure for netting this year so no bird issue for cherries this year. Many thanks to @mrsg47 for gifting us several nettings. They came in handy.

I think brown rot is still a big issue where I am. Ww had quite dry June, That helped a lot, in addition to 2 spray of Indar.

Last year, we had more rain before cherry ripening. Even 3 spray of Indar, I had more BR on cherries last year than I did this year.

[mrsg47]

So glad it worked !