With it being such a wonderful rot, worm, and crack free year I thought a small cherry report would be nice. Taste report is my opinion and I do favor the white cherries.
Black Tartarian- Excellent taste. Somewhat small. Minor problems. Longer fruiting wait time.
Rainier-Excellent taste. Good size. Cracking some years. Quick fruiting wait time.
Black York- Good taste. Similar to Bing. Good size. Minimal problems. Average fruiting wait time.
Stella- Ok taste. Good size. Minimal problems. Average fruiting wait time.
Lapins-Ok taste. Good size. Extremely fast growth. Longer fruiting wait time.
Hudson- Slated to be grafted over to montmorency. Ok taste. Smaller with a crunchier texture. Longer fruiting wait time.
Sweetheart- Good size. Good taste, but has to much sour in the skin for my taste. Quick fruiting wait time. In the process of being grafted over.
Montmorency-Really impressed with these. So much so that one of the sweets will be grafted over to monty. Almost no issues so far.
All of these varieties are good easy growing trees. Some are being grafted over for various reasons. Most are going to white cherries for the simple fact the birds REALLY do favor the reds over the whites. A vast difference in bird damage.
Of the listed varieties if you only have room for a few my tops would be: Black Tartarian, Black York, Rainier/White Gold, and Montmorency.
Thanks for the report @Robert , how frequent do you expect to have lucky years like this year? By “fruiting wait time”, do you mean precocity or ripening time?
Clay and deer wasn’t great for my first cherry planting attempt in 2020. This year for my second attempt I planted Stella, Montmorency, Black Tartarian, and Governor Woods in a different spot. Hoping to get more white/yellow/gold color cherries next year like White Gold, Royal Ann, and/or, Rainier.
@sockworth Cherries are like the other stones. The primary problems are rot and pc. So good harvest comes down to luck and sprays. Fruiting wait time is the amount of years it takes to start spitting out fruit. I have clay and rock soil also and yes deer love cherries. I think Gov. Woods is a white cherry.
I’ve read some of your reports on brown rot from previous threads and it makes me scared since we probably have very similar climate in terms of temperature, rain chance & amount, as well as humidity.
Seems Brown Rot issue could be solved by essentially spraying money (aka expensive fungicide) on the trees. What do you spray now on yours?
Brown rot is something to be afraid of and you will most likely have my experience. It really comes down to the rain. It’s good this year because we have not had much rain. In our normal amazon rain forest years rot can become uncontrollable. Sprays do not work as well because they are constantly washed off by the rains. Rot is also spread by the rain. To be honest though I’m finding cherries a little easier than the later ripening stones.
Yes that is the cure. I’m using Captan 80. Reasonably priced.
This is a very helpful report for me as I live about 30m west of DC. I was hesitant about growing sweet cherries but gonna give it a go with the 4 trees just ordered (BT, Ranier and Lapins). I started out last Falls with a handful of bush cherries but your report gives me hope of being able to pick my favorite fruits at home.
Bush cherry has all of the problems of regular cherries, but because of their lack of height need protection from deer permanently. That’s why I don’t have any.
Space is another constraint in my yard hence the initial thoughts with bush cherries. However, I now decided I like sweet cherries too much not to give them a try seeing others’ successes…and plan to do some stringent pruning to keep them to about 12-15’ at most.
They have what is considered dwarfing root stock for cherry. My Stella is one of them. It has stayed 10-15 foot in height and pretty easy to manage on its own. The others are more standard root stocks that grow fast and harder to control. Just pick a height and cut everything that goes above it. Trust me, cherries are not easy to pick with a ladder.
Yeah, that is considered dwarf for cherry. Cherries are massive trees. They must not have ever pruned it much. I question that zone 5-7 myself. Try some other sites to see what they say.
Not sure what they all are, but none have had any problems. Bare root trees are not fond of clay. If you’re first failures were bare root I would blame that.
Some revisions to the initial variety assessments. This year is a little slim in production after last years massive harvest. This year was grown spray free with almost no PC or rot damage. Birds had their fill though. Out of all the stone fruits I find cherry to be the easiest to grow at my location.
White Gold has moved to the best cherry in all categories except production. My top variety if someone was looking to put in a cherry. It’s easy to grow and has a delicious unique taste.
Stella has moved up a notch because of it’s reliability of production. Maybe one of the best in that regard. Taste is good.
Lapins has continued to anger me. Slim production and huge growth that I have to keep fighting to keep it from being a huge tree. With it’s only OK taste it may be getting grafted over next year.
Rainier well it’s rainier. What more is there to say. Awesome cherry.
Hudson was grafted over. Takes forever to produce and small ok cherries.
Sweetheart only half grafted over. It’s a quick producing tree with good size cherries. Just didn’t care for the skin taste.
Black York is a good one to grow if you like Bing. Easy to grow tree.
Black Tartarian had a small crop this year that was all stolen. Not one to plant for quick production, but an excellent cherry.
Montmorency without a doubt is the best sour cherry to grow. Pretty quick production, reliable production, trouble free, and great taste.
Bing was not included in the original list and still has yet to produce fruit. Most east coast growers say it’s a poor east coast cherry. Mainly because of cracking. Most likely will be grafted over.
Looking to increase the sour cherry line up, but most are pretty slim producers. Anyone have any suggestions for good crop production.