At first, I was amazed that your Juliet has produced so early and held on th its fruit.
Well, now that you told us your Juliet is a potted plant from Costco, it makes a better sense. My Juliet was bare root.
Your describing how and what you do with your sour cherries makes me feel better. Worse comes to worst, we can make ice cream out of it 
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Excellent photo’s and the cherries look so delicious. For the cherries you posted which ones are n s e and w in the photo?
I also love montmorency and while i am hopeful for juliet a overripe monty is one of my favorite cherries. How would you compare Early Richmond in time of bloom and hardiness to snap frosts and does it ripen at a different time?
I’m certainly going to get some kind of mechanical pit remover for next year (open to suggestions everyone) but in the mean time, tell me about your skewer method? Right now I’m just doing it with my finger.
Thanks, also, for confirming that CJ’s are just sour and it isn’t just mine!
I’ve not pruned them for shape to speak of. All my bushes arrived as single stem twigs for the most part. I did make the mistake of trying to open them up by pruning out the centers a couple years ago and that was a huge error on my part. But the general shape of all my stuff is just like single trunk to globe shape. I’ve taken the Juilet’s down in height a little, and the CJ’s a LOT.
I assume you’re asking about the cherries on the plate (my outside picture doesn’t capture the ER) On the left, the dark ones are CJ, on the top the smaller brighter red are ER, and on the right are the Juliet.
I’ve never not had cherries from my ER, so cold and frost doesn’t appear to bother it. It’s been in ground since '95.
It’s about a week behind CJ.
Funny thing, this year while CJ & Juliet were in massive bloom it was fairly warm and the pollinators were here in great numbers.
By the time ER got around to making blossoms the weather turned colder and the pollinators seemed to be on strike!
I’ll still have some ER’s this year but cherries on the ol’ gal are as scarce as I can remember. And it’s not just my tree, I planted a Monty at a friends and his too is spotty as is my Nephews.
But in terms of ripening windows go, the ER is usually a week to ten days behind my bushes.
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Here is an example of what they looked like:
I hold the cherry upside down and use the butt end of a thin wooden skewer to push the pit out of the top of the cherry. If the pit hangs, I use the pinky finger on the hand holding the cherry to wipe the pit free. I’ve never found a missed pit yet because I visually verify each one. Once in the groove, I usually put on music or show I can listen to. It’s not fast but goes smoothly.
I tried the Norpro Deluxe Pitter after seeing it used with CJ in the video. It didn’t work that well for me. It was chaos and it missed an awful lot of pits. There is no way to confirm the misses while operating it. It needs a pit slide to the side so the pits can be visually confirmed. Sometimes cherries go in two at a time. Sometimes the cherry falls of the plunger too soon and doesn’t advance to the out slide. Some reviews mentioned the the plastic frame splitting, which is understandable since there is no dampened bump stop for the plunger. You get what you pay for. I can think of some modifications to make it work better, but I haven’t taken the time to experiment.
Thank-you! Honestly, though, I’ve gotten so fast doing it by hand I’m not the skewer thing would be faster! I just kind of reach in the top with my pointing finger and pop it out while holding it with my other hand. I sit and watch tv while doing it and goes pretty fast. I also never miss a pit. Nothing worse than biting into a cherry pit.
@IowaJer Interesting that yours just grew like a tree. Both of mine came with more than one “trunk” and I even let a 3rd plant come up one one- so mine are pretty much bushes. I’m very curious to hear why you think opening yours up was a mistake. I did the same thing and feel pretty strong it was the right thing for mine. They were so thick in the center that they got too little sun and leaves wouldn’t even make it…almost exactly like @BobVance described in the link posted by @Ozymandias a couple posts above. Not that either of us are right are wrong- just interested in why it wasn’t good for your trees.?
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Has anybody tried one of these Cherry stoners?They are mentioned on the Honeyberry USA site.It looks like the pulp gets chewed up a bit,but that shouldn’t matter too much if they are going to used for cooking.I’ve seen used ones being sold for about $25 on Ebay. bb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3uOPAdKies&feature=youtu.be
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Someone tried it with CJ and it didn’t work due to small pit size. It probably works with the others though. I agree, it seems like the best approach for processing large amounts. I like that it rips open the cherries.
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i ordered a new one and it didn’t work with cj. haven’t tried with juliet yet. some older ones had adjustable sides that might work with cj. i got a couple from ebay but haven’t tried them yet. i contacted the manufacturer about making one with a slightly wider spinner plate in the center to make it work for cj and even offered to send them fruit for testing but they didn’t seem very interested. i think it could be 3d printed from high strength plastic also…
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I couldn’t find the thread where I’d talked about this before (But it must have been June of '18 because that’s when the pictures I found today were taken) so I’ll just add a couple pictures here along with my comments.
My general thought process at the time of pruning was roughly three-fold. 1) to open up the centers for better air flow to help with fungal issues. 2) I’d noticed the interior branches were becoming less and less fruitful and I assumed that it was due in part to less sunlight making its way in there. 3) Any fruit in the centers was getting increasingly difficult to harvest, and pickers (young and old…) were doing a lot of damage to the bushes in their zeal to get those hard to reach jewels…
Now I should also note that my bushes are (and were) too big. So if you’re pruning on smaller bushes it may not be as adverse.
After I pruned out the interiors, once the bushes began to leaf out and later put on fruit, by the time they were ready to harvest they were drooping to the ground under heavy load.
My bushes averaged 54.675 lbs each that year.
I had tied paracord rope around the branches and back to the main trunk in an effort to keep them off the ground and to lessen the stress on the overloaded exterior branches.
So it’s just my own opinion, but I think these things are shrubs/bushes and in my view they just require the interior intertwining habit in order to anchor itself to hold up.
In my initial post I was just offering my experience as a cautionary tale, but I still don’t imagine a few judicial cuts would be harmful. I’d just go slow on the amount reduced.
Hopefully yours fare better than mine did. (Maybe mine having a single trunk makes it worse, IDK?)
Anyway, here’s a couple shots of mine back in '18.
After this lesson I vowed to allow the centers to regrow and save my pruning to just giving them severe haircuts going forward!
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THank you so much for explaining, and of course that all makes perfect sense now. Seeing your pictures explains perfectly why it worked when I thinned my center (I actually did it last fall) and didn’t work when you did it- your bushes are WAY bigger than mine. Also, I just sort of thinned a couple large center pieces, so not a full clearing out at all. Looks like you really hollowed yours out so that is a great cautionary tale for me.
BTW, I literally was smiling just looking at all the fruit on yours. HOLY COW!!! I thought my bushes were productive- that is just crazy…and fun. One last question…did you just take the nets off before those photos or do you not net yours. Here, even with that massive fruit load, not a single cherry would have made it to that full red color without being bird food. Do you just have less birds or do you have some other trick?
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wow! amazing they didn’t break.
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I am surprised to see such a good crop on a smaller bush. They look tasty.
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I’ve never netted them. The birds don’t seem to be too hard on them.
One thing I have noticed is that in the bird bath between the ER and the CJ’s is that the pits in the bottom are always from the ER.
I’ve wondered if they are more attracted to the bright red of the ER as opposed to the darker purple on the CJ’s… or maybe they also think the CJ’s leave a “dry wine” after-taste 
They are really hard on my Honeyberries though.
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I am thrilled with this production from a bush that is so young and so small. I have another just like it a few feet over.
Juliet looks like a real winner.
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My best Juliet for crop load. My bigger bush didn’t set as many.
Here’s my best CJ.
All the cherries seem small to me. We had gone into a draught and I only watered twice. Here’s my biggest Juliet for the heck of it.
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I started with a Romeo and a Juliet that I purchased from a local nursery in big gallon pots and currently have another half a dozen starts that have branched off and been transplanted throughout my yard.
I had pretty good crops on both bushes last year (or at least more than I was expecting) and this year I seem to have way more than last year. So much so in fact that Juliet toppled over and had all the branches tipped over. I have used stuff to prop things up so that the branches aren’t on the ground, and thankfully it doesn’t look like any of the branches broke.
I am wondering if there is something that I should do to prevent this from happening again in the future? Should I be growing them in tomato cages or doing some kind of thinning? The Romeo bush seems to be fine and has significantly less cherries on it than Juliet so maybe it was just the perfect year for the Juliet bush. I’ll take some pictures tomorrow when it isn’t dark if that will help.
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