Impact of using Carmine Jewel as rootstock for sweet cherry

General Fruit Growing
#1

I have many Carmine Jewel suckers pop up in the yard. I would like to use it as rootstock to graft sweet cherries. My questions are:

  1. what level of disease resistance the tree will get overall?
  2. the level of productive of the sweet cherries that grafted on top?
  3. any known long term compatibility issues?

Thanks for sharing your experiences and the inputs in advance

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#2

Carmine Jewel is a hybrid of a tart cherry and another cherry like stone fruit. I would bet it dwarfs the sweet cherry if it works at all. You should give it a try for the sake of science… because if you get it to work alot of us will be trying it as well.

#3

Ok. I am willing to try. The problem I have is limited space. I don’t have space left to put in a tree that doesn’t grow well (I take it back.there are trees I should have chopped down long time ago, I just don’t have the heart to remove a tree that somewhat is still fruiting). I plan to graft them and give to my friends. But I need to let them know as much as I can. Most important, it produces cherries in normal amount.
I had a branch of whitegold grafted on Carmine jewel few years back . It’s still alive so I know this far. I am wondering how well it performs if it is a whole sweet cherry grafted on top.

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#4

Annie,
It is interesting to see how it work out for you.

My bush cherry trees grow like a bush with multi trunks going in all directions. I wonder how sweet cherry would grow on such a bush.

I can’t recall if sweet cherry can be grafted directly on to bush cherry. I know 39 Parallel has a thread in Reference about their genetic make up, whether or not they are compatible. I am just not motivated to look up.

Good luck.

#5

Thanks Tippy. I have more than one cultivar of sweet cherry grafted on the Carmine jewel. As it is a bush cherry, sweet cherry has to compete with the rest so it doesn’t grow as good as I want it to be. But if I use it as rootstock, all energy goes to the sweet cherry , I assume the sweet cherry will do better. But I would have some to confirm to be sure

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#6

Yes, keep us informed on this project.

#7

Will do

#8

Sour Cherry’s are a chromosome doubling of sweet cherry prunus avium and Mongolian cherry prunus fructicosa forming a aabb chromosome mix,. The romance series dwarfs are then back crossed with to have a chromosome pattern of aaab. Compatibility should be about the same as sour cherry l, eg comparable.

The problem is prunis fructicosa is a low growing multi branched bush. Without control you will likely see sucking.

#9

Bumping this.
Anyone experiencing dwarfing of sweet cherry by grafting onto Carmen Jewel or other bush cherry?
I removed my sweet cherries so I can’t tree it myself. Suckering would be a problem.

#10

I grafted sweet cherries onto Carmine Jewel, but Carmine Jewel is still the main tree. I started using Carmine Jewel suckers as rootstock for sweet cherry last year, the tree has not shown dwarfed yet.

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