I was wondering if you guys could help me distinguish between the two different leaf patterns. I started these from seed and they are growing well. I have 4 plants altogether and based off of the website, I have to have a male and a female to get fruit. I know there are self pollinating varieties but I couldn’t find one at the time of year I was looking. Can anyone give me some info on this tree in cold climates? 5b/6a. Should I plant this now or wait until next spring? Will it even flourish in my zone? I have done some research, but most of it is growers in warmer zones. We can get down to -20 with wind chill.
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I have a California dreaming seedless CHE… got it from Cliff at Englands orchard spring 2020.
It produces seeadless fruit with no other CHE around.
Last spring I grafted a scion of my CHE to osage orange… to get another going in my new orchard.
This is what it looked like last week. Growing nicely.
TNHunter
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My wife and I went to Englands orchard for the tour last fall. I tried CHE fruit from some of his trees… the fruit was larger than mine… but they were filled with these somewhat large annoying crunchey seeds.
My fruit has the consistency of a ripe strawberry… no seeds at all.
TNHunter
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Well I will have to look into getting a seedless for sure. Thank you guys! I am going to try my hand at grafting next spring.
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Che are parthenocarpic, so just don’t get a male and your fruit will be seedless. All the named cultivars should be female unless otherwise noted. It might take a little longer to ripen, though. Folks in Northern states like CT need the males because without them, the fruit doesn’t ripen in time for harvesting. Che needs long, hot summers.
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We have long hot summers here… so no problem ripening in southern middle TN.
I checked my CHE fruit pictures and the dates on them. Mid September - Mid October.
Last year at Englands Orchard … Cliff had several CHE trees and they were loaded with seeded fruit that was ripe Mid October.
Mid October looks to be the end of my CHE fruit ripening period… but I would say his were in the middle of ripening period Mid October.
Even though his were seeded they were ripening a bit later than mine. But he is quite a bit north of me and at much higher elevation.
TNHunter
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So regardless a female will produce fruit without a male?
Yep
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I had these at cliffs once but don’t really remember much about them. Are they good?
I can only speak for the few that I have tried.
My Calofornia dreaming seedless CHE fruit taste like a good ripe watermelon… but it has a berry flavor in there too… most like red raspberry.
I tasted of 4 or 5 different CHE varieties at Englands Orchard last fall… and they were all seeded. One of them tasted similar to mine but the others were short on flavor… quite bland.
I did not check the variety names… since none were better than mine.
TNHunter
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How easy are these to graft onto Osage orange? They grow like weeds here.
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I have the same question- Osage has a ton of sap/latex which seems daunting.
I’ve tried on small caliper branches with no success but that was before I knew enough about grafting in general.
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I traded someone here to get the osage orange rootstock… and what I got was a little short on roots… but I potted it up… early spring and waited until the OO started leafing out a bit.
I had scion from my own tree that matched the diameter of the OO pretty good.
I did a whip/tounge graft and it did not seem that difficult to me… it took and grew a little slow at first… but then grew very well later… made 6 ft tall that first season.
Someone mentioned that OO is very hard wood… like that would be difficult to graft… but honestly… i did not notice that.
That shows the growth last year… I planted it out in my orchard in the fall.
Last week it looked like that. Very nice growth.
TNHunter
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Thanks!
It is very hard from my understanding but I guess not as much on younger smaller stock perhaps.
So you didn’t have to do anything special to account for latex oozing?
I really liked Cliff’s Chul Ri cultivar. The flavor was on par with a dead-ripe Norris che, which was rather tasty.
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I’ve had pretty good success grafting che to osage orange, at least with young potted trees. I made a few cuts to the lower trunk just before grafting, so the excess sap would ooze from there and not flood the graft. Seemed to work.
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Thanks for the info. Also has anyone tried bark grafting OO with Che?
Do you have any of those now? Was getting ready to buy one if your interested in selling one. @TJ_westPA
I did not have any problem with sap oozing out and did not do anything special to counter that.
TNHunter
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I grafted 6 che onto oo for the first time this spring and all took. Just simple cleft grafts when buds started to open on the oo. They didn’t really ooze any latex at that time.
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