yes. only seen 100 2xs in my 53 years. last time was in 96’. anything above 80 is considered hot for n. Maine.
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only thing I need to spray for is insects here, so far at least. fingers crossed it stays that way!
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i got 6 yrs. growth and fruit before the diseases found me. last summer was a wet, hot summer and brown rot showed up. still got 80% the crop. then i didn’t get to spray my dormant oil before leaf out and fungicide before bloom. big mistake i wont repeat again. you guys are generally drier with a good breeze going most of the time so id think as long as you keep them pruned to allow good air flow you should be good. like the rest of the east coast , we get humid summers and cool wet springs. i havent had to spray for bugs yet just for fungus. had shothole 3 yrs ago starting on 1 tree but got it with immunox right away and removed affected leaves, stopping it.
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I decided to harvest my Juliet today. It could use a little more time but I’m going to be gone for a bit. It’s ripe I just like them darker. Big this year! Low production only about 2.5 pounds. Plenty for a pie or two.
Wowza has about double and I’ll harvest in a week to ten days.
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I ate about 40 (I roughly counted pits) once I was home and another 5-10 while picking. They did get a bit tart after a while, even though I was focusing on the most ripe ones. The less ripe ones will go into jam.
This year I picked them about 5 days later than last year (based on the pics I found). I had forgotten that they were ready until I was over at the rental mowing and happened to see them. Birds had already found them, but hadn’t eaten too many, as far as I could tell. I had 1 quart container with me for mulberries, but had to improvise for the rest. The total haul was about 2 lbs.
The darkest fruit was pretty soft and tender, so I think it is about as ripe as it gets without drying on the tree. I had trouble pinning down the exact brix, but it looked to peak in around the 15-17 range.
I’m not sure if the above pic counts as a light set or not. I’m very happy with it compared with all the bush cherries at home which produce only a handful of fruit (probably blossom blight). This one is at a rental, with nothing (that I know of) nearby for pollination.
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That’s what I’ve noticed too. I can’t let them get as dark as the U of S chart shows. Someone took some of my customers to task over it on social media. I told the dude that they really don’t get as dark as the chart shows here, without a decrease in quality. He claimed he could let his potted plants get that dark and they got sweet. It doesn’t work for my rows. Letting them get dark gets soft, tender and sometimes fermented.
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Yeah, I could have left the lighter half hang longer, but the chance of something else eating/damaging them isn’t worth it. Not when I want to use (at lest some) for jam.
Part of the reason sweet cherries (from the grocery store) are so good is that they can be 20-25 brix while still firm/crisp. No chance of that here. So while Juliet aren’t bad for fresh eating (much better than black currants or even goumi), they are really best for processing, where they shine (as do black currants and boysenberry).
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Yuck! I did decide to harvest mine because they were so soft. Taste pretty good to me! Oh I decided to actually weigh them and I got 3 pounds 1 ounce
Last year I got over 6 pounds.
I still have Wowza and two Monty’s I’ll harvest the Monty’s tomorrow. They are up north at my cottage else I would have harvested already. Going up for a week tomorrow.
One other photo from today’s Juliet harvest
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I thought that too but I grafted Utah Giant unto White Gold and even though I didn’t test brix they are really sweet even unripe ones are fantastic. They do crack easily though. I just harvest right after and they are great but look bad. One year none cracked. Three other years they all cracked. Fantastic cherry I want a whole tree.
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I started picking mine as well, I’ve eaten a few and they taste great even though they’re not dark red yet. Good enough for me, I don’t need them to be sweeter, and pretty sure the longer I wait the more the birds will steal. Looks like I’ll get a couple pounds on mine, which will be used for jam.
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I used to let my Juliet hang so long they shriveled. It gets darker than what was in @MikeB ’s pic but not as dark as the chart, never that dark.
Did they taste sweeter when I let it hang that long? Only a tad sweeter than when they were bright red, but not enough for me to eat them fresh more than a couple of cherries.
I have learned to use the word “tart” instead of sour when the fruit also has sweetness in it. Sour cherries are tart cherries for sure.
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My Juliet and Carmine Jewel both have fruit this year (planted in May of 22- small sticks from Honeyberry USA). I have trimmed them to trees rather than bushes. The CJ is about 5" tall and the Juliet is 4". Cherries are still green. Blows my mind that some people are harvesting cherries already, I’m just getting strawberries. I have them growing in hard rocky red clay and they seem pretty happy that way.
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Same, Im a good month or more away from cherries still myself!
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My monty’s are starting to ripen up as well, about a week earlier than last year. In a side by side taste comparison with Juliet, I have to say that Montmorency cherries are better. Juliet’s are good but they have a slight edge/astringency to them that I can see some people disliking. Monty’s have a smoother sweet/sour profile that makes them better for fresh eating.
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mont are about impossible to net and hard to spray though, ive got a tree in my hard thats maybe 10 years old and 25ft tall im guessing, also the fruit load is so low compared to other varieties like bali, I wouldnt plant it again personally, its just bird food for the most part.
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Agree on the netting, gave up on that years back. Spraying is also hard even with a step ladder. My trees are about 7 years old now and they’ve been fairly consistent light croppers the whole time. I used to think it was a pollination issue, but I realized this year it’s because the flowers get killed very easily by a light frost. We had another warm March this year, followed by a few lows in April around 26 degrees when the buds were in the green tip stage. The monty’s lost almost 95% of their crop, almost every flower had a dead, black pistil. Compare that to my Juliet which was farther along the bloom stage, and didn’t lose a single flower. Still looking at getting around 5-6 pounds of cherries this year, but I can’t help but imagine what could have been if we’d not had that frost. Maybe next year…
One of the U of Sask. documents suggested that they felt that summer heat was possibly the key to the cherries developing the best flavor. It said that peak ripeness coincides with the dark color in their location, but that color was perhaps not the key to determining ripeness everywhere. Based on what I’ve seen, I agree with that. Nice plump, fat, juicy romance cherries happen when they are fully red in my location. Dark color means shriveled, worthless fruit. The color keys for northern latitudes are not helpful for me.
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Picked them yesterday. About a week earlier than last year. Still too tart to our liking.
A lot more on the bush. I kept the stem on. They last longer this way.
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Hi everyone, Been reading a lot here for a couple of years, but just joined the forum a few weeks ago. I have learned so much from you all, so thank you!! Anyway, I have a Juliet and a Romeo and they are getting too large to easily net. I am getting older every year and want to make things easier on myself. I am wanting to cut the center out of my cherry bushes and make them a low open vase shape for easier netting and picking. They are quite vigorous in growth and I have read that summer pruning can cut back on that vigor which is fine with me. My question is do you all think it is too late to prune right now? Life got in the way this summer and here I am. Zone 6B, very southern Indiana. Thanks for any thoughts.
Sandra.
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Hi Sandra. welcome to the forum. id wait until they go dormant. cutting them right now would open them up to numerous infections. got a bad blossom end bight in mine in june so i had no choice but to prune out the infected wood and spray. i removed the center of each tree making them like you want . a vase shape so it was actually a good thing. i still got a decent crop also.