I tasted mine and thought CJ had an excellent flavor. Surprisingly sweet for a tart cherry. I guess each has to decide if they feel it’s what they want. I have no plans to add other tarts, this tree is fine.
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Drew,
The one complaint I had with them is they produced to many cherries for birds, me, family and friends to keep up with. I wasn’t prepared. Anything that produces fruit like that is excellent. They could make cherry juice affordable to everyone again. Would love to see concentrate cherry juice in the store like I see apple or grape juice. Those big standard trees produce a lot but they also shade out a lot of growing space that’s not being used.
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True. I wonder if commercial growers are planting these? Would probably be easy to harvest with machinery too. 100% cherry juice costs a mint. You could plant these things in very cold areas too. Think of what 10 acres of these would bring in!
I’m glad i added one, but i’m glad i just have one. If that is how they produce, one will be more then enough. I’ll probably freeze what we don’t eat.
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Cherry juice from tart cherries is sold here in a few select grocery stores ( as is Saskatoon/ Service berry juice). We do not have the variety of fruit to choose to grow that others in more temperate zones do, but I am grateful that Carmine Jewel, Evans and the Romance series cherries have all become a commercial success in my neck of the woods.
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Same here, I have a North Star that I planted in '11 that is no where near the size of the CJ’s that same age. NS is the last cherries I pick, I harvested 1.5 gallons total off the tree.
I do like the flavor, in fact last night I pitted some and was getting consistent brix readings of 15+. Very pretty cherry & juice. But this tree is REAL slow to make a bunch of cherries. I keep saying… maybe next year.
That’s a thought, I for sure have the suckers - now if I only knew the first thing about grafting…
I could use a little cool right about now Don!!!
I can attest to that, and add pie. My bride makes a killer CJ pie and EVERYONE raves about it. Last year she kept telling me she thought the CJ’s were sweeter than the ER’s and as a result she used less sugar in her pie. It was great and when we had family over we had one ER & one CJ pie and if I recall about half preferred the CJ to the ER and vise versa. So there is NOTHING to fear about putting in a CJ bush, they’ll serve you well and you won’t be sorry I’m sure of that.
I just used the cherries and all the juice they produced and added the Sure-Jell. In the past, I would remove some of the juice thinking that it was a reason for the poor set, but this stuff in the pink box worked really good.[quote=“warmwxrules, post:40, topic:6362”]
I wonder if commercial growers are planting these?
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I read where they are the most widely planted cherry in Canada. I think they were talking about commercial growers. It was something in the U of S info I was reading.
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If it’s the same stuff I’ve used, it calls for added juice, and I’ve used cherry juice to good effect
I’d think those CJs in particular would make preserves easily w/o pectin, which tends to use less sugar
Friend of mine on FB harvested 28,000 lbs last year in southern canada…
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I’m not an expert, but I think these Romance cherries are the most widely sour cherry being planted in Canada now, but not the most widely planted cherry overall. In southern Ontario and in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley they grow a lot of sweet cherries, and that would be the bulk of the cherry acreage in Canada I think. There has also been a modest sour cherry industry in Ontario for many decades, growing mostly Montmorency. These new sour cherry bushes from the U of S were developed to create a sour cherry industry on the Canadian prairies, where sweet cherries can only be dreamed about and where it’s too harsh for tree-form sour cherries, except for Evans growing in urban centres (people outside cities have variable luck with it, so not something you’d base an orchard on). Commercial acreage in Romance cherries has been exploding on the prairies in recent years, good to see.
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I got 10 small CJ’s two years ago for $6 each from an end of the year sale, then bought a large potted one this year. No cherries yet. I finally got to try properly ripened fresh Surefire and Meteors this year. I was very, very happy them. I would highly recommend both. Both are a little larger than Montmorency. BTW, does anyone know if Stark’s Surecrop pie cherry is the same as Surefire? They seem similar to me, but my Surecrop tree is not vigorous at all.
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Color me freaking jealous!!!
Thanks for the info on CJ. I noticed that @IowaJer has CP. Would you mind telling me where you got it? I have CJ, Romeo and Juliet but I haven’t been able to find CP and Cupid.
http://honeyberryusa.com/honeyberry-plants-2.html
Honeyberry is where I got my CP. They’re great folks to deal with too.
Speaking of making jerry jam, I too use the pink box (sure-gel lite). I cannot use plain sure-gel as way too sweet a finished product. I find sure gel lite works great on everything but grape jelly and cherry jam as per the directions… It was a bit too soft a set on the grape jelly (so my children say). This year I added 1.5 packets of sure- jel lite on the grape jelly and it set up at just the right stiffness.
It works fine on my cherry jam but it sets up really thick! A bit too thick for me although the flavor was excellent. I am thinking of experimenting and cutting back on the pectin by 25% on my next batch of cherry jam. Usually I pit and freeze the cherries and make the jam in March during my slow season.
What type of cherries are you using Spartan?
I’ve had to modify/adjust the amounts of sugar and pectin slightly as well. When I cut back on the sugar it impacted the set, so I had to bump up the pectin a tad. But I’ve had a batch that turned out like jars of super balls… I try very hard to stick to the rolling boil times called for.
It seems like when I do very juicy cherries like the ER, it’s slightly different than when doing more meaty cherries like CJ.
And for that matter, ER jam made from earlier cherries fresh off the tree are a little different from the last picked. Those final cherries have plumped up so much and have a higher brix number.
In any case, I really like the low/no sugar pink box stuff.
Iowajer:
I have made cherry jam in the past with North Star cherries and also Montmorency cherries. Both set a bit thick for me following the directions of the recipe for sure-gel lite. This year I will be using Surecrop cherry (Stark Nursery) and Mesabi cherry
as those are the ones that gave me a great crop in 2016.
When I used North Star I actually increased the amount of sugar called for on the
sure-gel lite recipe by 1/4 cup to get the sweetness I desired. With Montmorency, I found I could reduce the sugar slightly from what it called for.
I suppose the sweetness depends on the cherry variety and at what brix it was picked at. These are all reflections from making a lot of cherry jam over the years and with different cherry types too. I even tried Balaton once and found it made a much more purple colored jam after cooking than the other varieties did.
Using the pink box (sure-gel lite) is definitely the way to go as you can vary the sugar to your taste and still get a good set. My memory recalls once reading that
sure-gel lite binds to calcium molecules. Regular Sure-gel binds to sugar molecules. I always laugh at the warning on the Sure-gel lite box “do not reduce the sugar in each recipe or it may not set” as this product also claims it will set the jam/jelly even if no sugar added. Not sure why they keep printing this bogus
warning on the box if the product is Sure-gel lite.
I just finished off a jar of North Star yesterday. I like it very much but had to remove my tree to make room for a metal building. It was a very shy producer though, so I wasn’t heartbroken about removing it. It was the last tree I harvested this year, and only got 1.5 gal. It was planted in '11 as probably a 2-3 year container tree. I might find that I need to have another one in, but if I do I think I’ll try to see what root stock would seem to make for a little better production…
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Jerry,
I’m going to top work my north star with Montmorency this year for the same reason.
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Jerry,
Looking at the ripening dates from last year on your carmine Jewell I suspect your harvest is very close. It appears your yields last year exceeded those of Montmorency. I’m curious what yield will be like this year. My estimate is your less than a week away from the cherries starting to turn. Never had a chance to top work my northstar to Montmorency but I’m not ruling out getting caught up at some point and t budding northstar. These 90 degree days should be bringing the cherries around very soon. When I compare CJ to Montmorency I mean that as a compliment to Montmorency since it sets the bar as the best sour cherry. Montmorency from my perspective overall is still king for pies because it can easily be pitted. Here was my 2017 harvest Carmine Jewell Cherry Yields increasing with age - #255 by Johnnysapples. Hopefully very soon you will post pictures of a CJ harvest that will make my harvest look mediocre. Good luck on your harvest .
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Very happy with my Carmine Jewel. All my Lapin cherries have brown rot. The entire crop is lost. Ten feet away is Carmine Jewel. Every cherry looks perfect.
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I’ve seen zero BR, mold, or cracking on my CJ’s this year. My ER is prone to some BR so I spray for that but still I see a touch of it on a few cherries. My CJ’s sit right
there in the same general vicinity and so far I’ve seen nothing. Again, it’s few and far between on the ER, just that I’ve seen none on CJ’s whatsoever.
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