My Carmine Jewels have blooms about 3/4 inch across. They are starting to open this week.
From your posts it sounds like the CJs taste like tart cherries ā¦ is that right?
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Yes it is a tart cherry crossed with a Mongolian cherry, which gives it itās hardiness and bush size. All the Romance series except maybe Cupid are other seedlings of the same cross.
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So no chance to pollinate sweet cherry, right?
Iām not sure? The seed would be sterile,because of different ploidy levels if it did. You can use chemicals to breed them. Colchicine can be used to double the chromosomes in sweet cherries to match the number tart have, so hybrids are certainly possible with some help.
All the Romance series cherries and CJ also (which is not really part of the Romance series even though it is very similar) are tart cherries and you would never mistake them for sweet cherries even though some of them have high brix. Thatās because they all have high acid, even if they also contain a lot of sugar. I grow only the dark colored types (CJ, Cupid, Juliet, and Romeo), and I find Juliet and Cupid are pretty easy to eat out-of-hand but they are definitely still a tart cherry. CJ and Romeo are too sour for me to eat more than few fresh, so Iād use them for pies, sauces, juice, syrup, but not fresh eating. Cupid has the biggest fruit, CJ the smallest. Cupid is about the size of commercial sweet cherries and has a hard time fitting in my old-fashioned cherry pitter. The Romance and CJ are all self-fruitful so no pollinator needed ā you can grow just one kind and still get fruit. I donāt think theyād act as pollinators for sweet cherries but I have little knowledge in that area.
Hereās my bush-cherry row on May 4, Zone 3, after a mild winter and hot spring. From left to right is Romeo, Juliet, Cupid, Carmine Jewel (I planted the varieties alphabetically so theyād be easy to remember). Romeo is about full bloom today, Juliet is a bit past full bloom (you can see some petals on the ground), Cupid is still a few days away from peak bloom (itās called ābig and lateā for a reason), and Carmine Jewel is a day or two away from peak bloom.
Itās too bad I will never be able to get a photo of them all in full bloom at the same time!
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Don, thanks for the great observations about the cherries. I have only CJ, planted three years ago and really starting to ramp up production. It was the only variety of the series I could find at the time. Interesting that given the descriptions of the entire line, CJ is not one I would choose firstābut that was all I could find then. Similar to other stories of staggered releases of new varieties. Probably pressure to get one to market ASAP, even though the better ones are still in the pipeline. I would like to add other cherries of this series to my orchard but availability is still an issue.
Marc
Don-
How do they compare to say a Northstar or Meteor? All i have right now is a seedling of Meteor and a CJ which hasnāt fruited yet.
Drew51, what is this strange language you speak?
dehybridized english.
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