Carmine Jewell is light on blooms this year due to variety of conditions from diseases that cause yellowing of leaves, age of bushes, competing trees maturing nearby. It’s 4am on April 20th 2021 and these bushes are covered in a heavy blanket of snow. Typically I spray a fungicide for leaf issues but was not up to it last year. I’m very happy everyone has done so well with these cherries you just need some patience. It’s siblings Juliet and Romeo seem equally hardy. Time will tell if they due as well in Kansas.
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This is my 3rd leaf carmine jewel. Panhandle of Texas. It gets fairly cold and very hot. Lots of wind and the bush seems to thrive.
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I think this is one of the most productive things I’m growing for the relatively small space it takes up. I love these bushes. Here is a video from today… almost pie time!
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@Mpigg @zendog as you can see above in 2015 and 2016 when i started getting heavy crops of carmine jewell it felt like it had taken forever. It’s so good to see you all getting heavy yields of cherries and knowing production will go up! Romeo is a very heavy producer! @39thparallel might post some pictures of hos this year. @zendog like you i have many new bushes popping up all over i began to notice once the bush was mature. What i tell everyone about these cherries learn from my mistakes and apply manure or compost asap they are heavy feeders. The amount they produce is simply amazing! You guys are doing a great job of growing these!
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The only reason I gave them a chance is because of your success. Thanks Clark
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Your not only having success they look like you can barely hold them back. I’m very happy they are getting the recognition they deserve. You did a fantastic job growing those. I was interested in them for years prior to them being imported into the United States from Canada where they were grown in a home by a genteman who worked for the goverment but not at the University of Saskatchewan. The university cherry program was pretty much terminated. DNA gardens Unique Zone 2 Hardy fruit trees like Treasured Red, Black Currant Plants | Elnora, AB and others grew them from tissue culturing and eventually they became very popular in Canada. Evans a seedling rumored to be of montmorency was very popular in Canada in those days named after Dr. Evans its founder Evans Cherry - Wikipedia. Evans is still popular to this day. Dr meader was also working on developing bush cherries in the usa around the same time carmine jewell was released. Later i began growing joel as well.
Jan, Joel, Joy Dr. Meader cherries. It took me a long time to get the meader cherries as they were frequently sold out. They are much smaller bushes. I even looked at getting an importer liscense to order some carmine jewell but the cost was pretty high for cherry bushes. They introduced the romance series cherries soon after carmine jewell. The north star cherry which i grow is a parent in the breeding project. The university was going to scrap the cherry project but then there was a discovery. Les Kerr was working in private since the 1940s to improve the quality of sour cherries BBC - Travel - The secret cherry taking over Canada. “As a lone grower, he was doing work no-one else thought could be done.” He was a goverment employee near his death that revealed the plants he grew at home and then the university continued to work with them. I was ecstatic when gurneys paid the import fees and offered the bushes. I bought them as soon as they were available for sale in this country. Some friends who were having problems growing cherries in this area are now consistently getting heavy yields. They are very resistant to common cherry diseases. We are very fortunate to have bushes like these available to us. Glad you and @zendog are spreading the word everyone needs these in their back yard! Apparently honeyberryusa came into this picture as well like gurneys offerring carmine jewell. Who knows maybe they even imported them first but whats important they are here now. We ordered canadian cherry plants from both nurseries through the years. Are they all identical plants? No they are not i had a carmine jewell that bloomed later than all the others suggesting they were not all genetically the same plant at first. They are i believe the same more or less now. The carmine jewell i grew that was different did not grow as fast and remained shorter in the row. All the others were exactly the same plant. Carmine jewell and all the romance series cherries are Prunus cerasus aka north star x Prunus fruiticosa aka Mongolian cherry Canadian Dwarf Sour Cherries – Prunus x kerrasis — Carrington REC . Carmine jewell was the first in 1999 to be released Sour Cherries - University of Saskatchewan Fruit Program - University of Saskatchewan
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Romeo is a smaller bush then CJ. It seems to start bearing faster then CJ. Harvest seems to be a little later than CJ so I’m still waiting on fruit.
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That looks like a great pie! Our cherries are behind yours. Ours typically ripen June 5th or later. Wonder how @IowaJer canadian cherries are doing. My only wish is these cherries were available sooner and we could have a good mechanical pitter!
It looks soo delicious! How do you pit the cherries?
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Thanks it was. My wife did the crust. I pitted them by hand since we only had about a half gallon. It would get old pitting 20 gallons.
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@clarkinks for years I watched your CJ bloom and fruit with envying. My CJ had always been a lot of bloom but very few fruits. But this year is different. My CJ bloomed and fruited like no tomorrow. The branches all dropped down loaded with berries. The berries are colored up and sized up nicely. In a week or 2 the berries should be ripe enough for picking.
Now, my questions are
1)how to pick them? There are a lot of berries to pick if by hands. Any tool that can make the picking job easier?
2) I don’t think I want to pit them, too much work. So what are my options to consume the berries?
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Yikes, thats a lot of cherries! I can’t think of a way around pitting them. Buy a few pitters and invite guest to pit? I’d go. Make sure you have a pie on hand.
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Yeah, I am thinking maybe making cherry wine dump whole thing into a bucket without pitting. But I am not sure if it is a safe way to do it. The seeds contain poison in certain degree.
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I used a paperclip and the seed came out quick.
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They are hard to find, but the old cast iron crank style pitters are fairly effective if you get one that has adjustable side plates so you can adjust for the smaller than normal pit size. Mine seem to work better with juliet that CJ.
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There are several things you can do. One thing many do and i dont is the use of a berry rake. They cost $10 - $20 
Like you i dont want to pit all those cherries so i extract the juice. I use a mehu-lisa juicer or something similar. The concept is the steam cooks the cherries down and the cherry juice runs out the hose leaving pit and waste behind. It makes a lot of juice! We pit a small number by hand for a pie or two. If you want to can the juice it comes out hot enough to do so. It will be the most concentrated , healthy cherry juice you have ever had in your life. I have made wine that way with no problems but dont crush the pits.
Remember many traditional juicers crush the pits and you cannot do that. There is a small amount of poison in all fruit but by steaming and stirring no pits are crushed. Wine making is longer exposure but mush more diluted by water.
The yeast is mostly done moving in a few days.
Great job on growing those cherries its a bumper crop!
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@clarkinks
I am planning to make some wine from my cherries. Not enough this year but by next year I should have a good amount for it. Do you dilute the steamed juice with water or add anything besides yeast? Also, have you tried it dry? I cant do back sweetened wine too much sugar so worried it might be overly sour as a dry wine.
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