From the right is CJ, Monty, Balaton. I guess the CJ could be left to hang longer. I prefer both of the others over it in terms of flavor, aroma, but CJ is much easier to net against birds. We picked a couple gallons of all three tyes yesterday.
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Mine almost always are about a week apart, but the CJ bushes are always ahead of my tree. In '16 I started harvesting CJ on 6/13 and the biggest harvest day was on the 18th that year. The tree on the 19th and the 22nd was it’s big day. It was similar last year on dates, but this year everything was later by almost 2-weeks.
When the CJ’s got so loaded this year I really wanted folks to get them off to give them some measure of relief.
By the time I got on the tree it was prime for picking but I couldn’t get anyone interested in picking free cherries by then…, most of the folks on my blast out list had already taken a few gallons of CJ’s and just didn’t want/need anymore cherries to pit!!!
End result is this:
I have a still loaded tree, that I was only able to harvest 10 gallons off of before they went bad on the tree.
I can’t remember a year when so many cherries were left on the old boy…
And there’s this kinda thing on the CJ’s:
We took 60.75 gallons off the five bushes and there are just tons left out there.
Literally smells like a brewery over there.
Just feels like a fail in a lot of ways - just a waste.
Kinda contemplating removing a couple of the bushes, but may first try to just prune for girth and try and get them in check.
For the record on this topic - I still can’t top the flavor of the old standard Monty type!
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It must be nice to have that problem. At this time I am netting because I don’t want a single one going to the birds.
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Well it was sorta nice when everything was somewhat smaller and there just wasn’t so dang much. Now it’s beginning to feel like it kinda just consumes me, and everything else just has to take a back seat until cherries are done. I’m too old for this!!!
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I have 2 giant cj bushes. Gonna cut them in half next spring or this fall after they go dormant… that should make them more manageable next year
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My CJs are done now. I had to strip the trees before another rain storm because they were all going soft and rotting. They were fine…nothing like a sweet cherry…but still good. I’m going to hack mine back. No way am i letting this thing fruit anymore then it does now. It was a pain to harvest what i did and then the rest was thrown into the yard for the birds and bugs to fight over. Lots of rot on them as they turned darker… they should have probably been harvested earlier.
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I think it dawned on me that when I start to not look forward to cherry season something has to be done.
It’s one of those things that people (my wife included…) will say to me with mouth wide open… “what made you think you needed 5 of these”?!
And as noted in prior years threads, I got them based on the published descriptions from U of S and various vendors, which all said they would get to 6-7’ tall and about 5’ wide.
When they surpassed that and I was still awaiting the claimed amount of fruit, I just felt like… well maybe next year they’ll kick in and I’ll get X amount, etc.
And meanwhile they would add a couple feet of growth! Before ya know it we’re needing ladders, and then this year despite the 3-4’ prune job they set so much fruit the branches were falling on the ground or into the next bush over. You couldn’t walk between the bushes.
So in a way it kinda snuck up on me, as earlier on I was hesitant to prune on them since I wanted a bigger harvest or at least something approaching the advertised expected take.
I blame it on myself some too, as I knew there weren’t a lot of them in the midwest when I got them and all we had to go on was how they preformed in their original area up north. So now we know…
But as noted above, I guess it’s a good problem to have - at least we have a strong producer and we know it doesn’t seem to hamper the volume when heavily pruned so I’m going to take another whack at 'em too, in an effort to get them to a place where I once again look forward the the season 
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My Northstar is the star of the show for me with cherries,. I easily could have filled 1-1 1/2 5-gal buckets last week from NS.
Evans gets shaded by the northstar. Its a cherry whose flesh stays pretty blond when ripe. Tasty, but I prefer the NorthStar.
Crimson Passion were pretty heavily struck by the wildlife. The few that I had were the best cherries I had this year.
Carmine Jewel had a problem. I got 1 cherry total (on a 5 foot bush). 2 weeks before ripening leaves started turning yellow on half the bush and started dropping badly. That part of the bush was shaded (but one of the benefits on being in a huge pot is I can get some help and move it. Leaves have not yet re-grown, but the die-back did not seem to progress any further once I moved it. The yellowing doesn’t seem to be mottled green, so I don’t think its cherry yellows (but I could be wrong, any ways to treat if it is?)
I’ve never had much of a problem with rot until this year, so starting next year I will be spraying I assume.
Scott
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I had a Northstar that I had to remove when my metal building was built, but I wasn’t heartbroken simply because it was a very shy bearer. I liked what fruit I did get quite a lot though, and when I’d make jam out of it I found that I’d try to make it last longer by using less… (that and not setting it out when the grand kids were over). Well, we had plenty of CJ, ER, or peach jam they love too - just not certain they could appreciate the NS and it’s scant presence in our inventory!
Your CJ dropping yellow leaves sounds like what happens to my CP’s when they get cherry leaf spot. I’ve never grown anything in pots so can’t say much on that, but if it’s not leaf spot maybe it’s a wet feet problem?
I can’t grow stuff absent fungicide sprays, so I do them every year. I also give them a dose as soon as I can post harvest.
NorthStar has not been a good producer in Kansas. I’m told there are locations it does well. I’m thankful for the tree because I’ve read the romance series cherries were grown from a cross with northstar. Northstar does not produce many cherries here however it’s very healthy and disease resistant.
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I’ve also read that there’s Northstar parentage in CJ, and I believe it. Not only the coloration but the cracking. My NS tree was a fine specimen though. And while I know they’re a genetic dwarf it always amazed me that it went in the same year as my first CJ’s in 2011, as a potted probably 2 year old tree, while the CJ’s were mere twigs in 2" containers. The trunk diameter on my CJ’s were 4+ times that of the NS, and the height goes w/o saying… In terms of growth and production it wasn’t even a contest, NS was small and it’s crop was as well… I liked the tree and the fruit though.
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I left what would have been my first harvest of red cherries on my Carmine Jewels and black ones on my Crimson Passion when I left on a trip June 27. When I returned to the bushes on July 12, the cherries were gone, except a few sort of rotten red ones and a few shriveled up, dry black ones. I guess the dates for late July ripening of CJ I had read are not accurate for St. Paul, MN, area. Do rodents also get them, or did the birds get through the netting?
I just now read through this thread, very good info. Don, or other folks, can you tell me your opinion of Romeo, how it compares to the other cherries? I put in one Romeo and one CJ this spring. I have a Montmorency and Stark Surecrop that fruited for the first time this spring. We are in a drought this year, so the cherries were very small, and were pretty astringent. I often pick cherries at a neighbors’ about 15 miles from here, she has 2 big Montmorencies. This year they were so small they weren’t worth picking she said.
In a drought here and my Monts are smaller than the CJ this year, which are about 3/4" on average. The Monts were brix 15 and CJs were brix 14 when I decided to pick them. The CJs are much juicier and more intensely acidic.
I should mention that I don’t wait for my CJs to get as dark as they can. I figure a brix of 13 or higher should be good enough for dishes where sugar is added. The color card from University of Saskatchewan suggests a potentially long picking window from a brix of 13.
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I totally agree. Mine have never gotten super dark, I suppose maybe they mostly get to the August 11 or maybe 18 look on the chart.
I will say that the brix on mine never seemed to increase, even if I checked them when I’ve stopped picking and they’re almost in decline with bug hits etc.
Dr. Bors did mention that a lot of the commercial growers up there are no longer leaving them on the bush in an attempt to get higher brix and darker color advertised, but instead are harvesting them earlier to avoid brown rot outbreaks that have plagued many orchards when left too long.
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Based on physical attributes, Montmorency for baking and CJ for juicing. Montmorency is meatier with less free juice. After pitting a quart over a plate with the butt end of a wooden skewer, the plate was mostly dry. CJ is softer with more free juice. The plate was completely covered with dark red juice after pitting a quart.
Based on flavor, I would not eat either fresh.
I made a sauce with CJ juice and sugar. It tasted like mixed berry, with strawberry being noticeable. When I added the sauce to a vanilla milkshake it tasted more like blackberry ice cream to me. Overall, I would say it taste like acidic berry flavor that can change as the acid is rebalanced. I would not describe it as cherry when introducing CJ to people for the first time because they will have the wrong expectation. I think of it as unique bush berry now, rather than a cherry substitute.
CJ has had a higher flesh to pit ratio than Montmorency, especially with the drought this year, but I only have two years to compare. CJ seems to be unaffected by the drought in this respect. Some of the fruits were a little more astringent though. Maybe they need a little more hang time in a drought.
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Before I forget, I should mention that left about 15 cherries on a bush to determine the max harvest date. I checked them a about a month later, in mid-August. All of them were still looking good, completely unchanged. I sampled a couple. The slight astringency was gone but the sugar level was still about the same. I wasn’t too surprised about the sugar, there were only a few sunny days the whole month. I was, however, surprised that none had rotted in the near constant wet conditions (no spray). I planned on checking the rest of the cherries about a week later but didn’t remember until about 10 days. At that point they were all shriveled up. So, the cutoff date here seems to be somewhere around the third week of August. It’s nice to know that I have about a 4-5 week picking window. The literature indicates this, but I was skeptical.
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I just have 1 cj and 1 of the other name (forget)…that is enough. I think i’m going to keep mine heavily pruned. My kids still prefer the sweet cherries (Lapins) but they are rot magnets.
As do most adults and birds for that matter. Here, unnetted sour cherries are much more likely to stick around on the tree without nets. I only get one customer request for sour cherry trees about every 3 years so stopped growing them in my nursery. Lots of people want at least one sweet cherry in their orchards even when I tell them that in our climate they crack every season it rains much in the week before ripening and don’t even get that far on very wet years. And then the nets! Mont at least doesn’t crack much and is pretty reliable. Weird growth habit though.
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