KlecknerOasis I have a few suckers this year and was wondering how old are your bushes? I also wanted to let everyone know my carmine jewell’s are actually ripening now a month earlier than they have in other years. They certainly made a liar of me saying they ripen in July.
Got a tiny plant from gurneys back in 09, in 2011 I cut it in half and moved the 2 to their permanent spots.
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I have two volunteer bushes coming up in my strawberry bed about ten feet from three Carmine Jewels. I wondered if the birds had spread them or if they were just wild cherries coming up there. I didn’t think there had ever been any cherries on my Carmines yet to spread. Now I wonder if it is a sucker. Does anyone know if the wild chokecherries and pin cherries look the same as a Carmine Jewel bush when young. I see no difference between these and my nearby Carmine Jewels. I guess I will let them grow and see what happens.
I get a lot of tip death on my CJs and my nanking cherries here in Maine. I’m assuming it’s an insect…help…what is it and what should I do about it? Thank you in advance.
My first thought would be winter freeze injury. But if you can see insect damage that might be the case.
I posted this earlier.Does the damage look similar? Brady
Grasshoppers girdled the tips of mine last year. Birds need a water supply available but they eat a lot of grasshoppers so encourage them to hang around. Plant mulberries and they won’t eat cherries
I’ve tried some bush cherries but here in our wet Spring climate, none have produced well yet. Montmorency outproduces everything I’ve seen by a large margin so far.
John S
PDX OR
That’s good because we have wet humid weather here too and I only have the Montmorency. I wanted to get some bush cherries but maybe I’ll just hold off.
My Korean bush cherry Prunus japonica also gets lots of diseases, most of which look fungal, and has basically ceased to fruit. Brady that effect on your leaves looks like a lot of what I get. Northstar gets it bad. I would guess it is bacteriological, but I don’t know for sure. Montmorency gets some but still fruits and is productive.
John S
PDX OR
@BobVance You probably posted this somewhere else, but after reading this thread and seeing your photos from this past spring, I’m very curious how your Crimson Passion bush cherries turned out/tasted, etc.
Based on this thread and others, I’m thinking Crimson Passion and Juliet may be the best choices (which for me means the sweetest). So I’d enjoy hearing your results or anyone else’s thoughts. Thanks
Bob,
I’ve had good luck with North star. I’ve had it about 12 years and no signs of disease. It’s a lighter cropper than what I’d like it to be. Its about 12-14’ tall. I’m growing montmorency I grafted a year ago off my girlfriends tree and I had to pluck cherries off already where it produced. I’ve got a bunch of rootstocks I’m thinking of grafting to romance series cherries. Is there a patent on them?
I wasn’t impressed with any of my sour cherries for fresh eating. The most promising was a Korean bush cherry (from Rolling River), which tasted pretty good, but were small. Maybe I picked some of the others too early (birds go after them). Danube wasn’t bad either, but there were only 4 cherries on a good sized tree-almost as big as the Northstar, which gave 3.5+ quarts.
From my notes:
6/20/2015- Just under a quart of Crimson Passion (10.5 brix), just over a pint of NorthStar (9 brix), 4 Danube (12.5 brix) and 3 Korean Bush cherries (12.5 brix).
6/27/2015- Picked 3 quarts of Northstar cherries with my older daughter. Tree is just about finished. I also removed the damaged ones.
That night I pitted 5 quarts of cherries with my daughter (so much red everywhere…) and made 11 jars of jam.
Lutowka cherry, Balaton, and Montmorency all produced 1-4 cherries for me. The Lutowka was the sweetest, at 14 brix, but it was growing in a tiny pot (since sent to my brother to find an in-ground home). Neither of the Balaton or Montmorency stood out.
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I had a lot of blossom blight 2 years ago. At least I think that is what it was (Scott helped with the ID, back when were were all on GW). This year they weren’t bad for disease (some rot), though I did get a few worms, which I found while pitting them (hopefully I got em all, as they were good sized white ones).
I think mine is really slowing down around the 8-9’ mark, which is fine for me. I’m actually planning to put some of the sour cherry grafts onto Northstar and some onto Danube. Though I don’t want to take up too much of the Danube, as I think they are the more promising for fresh eating (just low quantity so far).
I thought that they were under patent, but when I searched, I didn’t find them. Maybe someone knows more on international patents?
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Thanks very much for the update, Bob, even though it wasn’t what I was hoping to hear. 10.5 brix is a long way from the 22 brix purported by the honeyberryusa site. While not surprising, it seems like vendor sites often tout results that may be possible but certainly not average. Kind of reminds me of the MPG ratings that automakers put on the sales sheets for new cars!
I had those white worms this year on my Northstar for the first time and wondered what they were.
I don’t blame the site for this- I think the brix comes directly from the university which released the series. It may be perfectly normal results in the northern prairie (cold winters, then lots of sun and not much water). So far, I would view them as similar to any other sour cherry, but with the additional bonus of staying bush sized.
As you can see from this pic, it definitely wasn’t dry last spring when they were ripening.
I’m not sure, but here is a pic of one.
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Yes that’s them Bob. My North star is a good 1/8 mile from my other cherries so they won’t find their way to my other cherries for awhile yet I hope.
It could be a Cherry Fruit fly, but the larvae pictured in this link look a bit smoother than the ones I found.
Maybe we should put up some yellow stickies, like they have pictured at the bottom of the link?
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Bob,
Those sticky traps shown in the wsu link are definitely covered. They must be a lure as well. I read this article as well http://extension.usu.edu/boxelder/files/uploads/Fruit%20Production/Western%20Cherry%20Fruit%20Fly.pdf to get some control method ideas.