My "Romance series" cherries

[warmwxrules]

So is that alcoholic? And if not…at what point does it become?

[Don3a]

I didn’t do before and after hydrometer measurements to calculate the actual alcohol content but my guess is it’s about 5% or 6% alcohol by volume.

[ClothAnnie]

I saw green little tips on the buds of both my carmine jewel and Romeo today! We have had some really nice weather in the 70s yesterday and today. Could the greening just be energy reserves in the plant or could it mean that the root systems are starting to grow?

[Drew51]

Thanks a lot for the report! Let us know how the 20% tastes too please. I’m going to do this for sure! You could also infuse vodka with the cherries. I have done raspberries, blackberries, and magnolia vine berries, which was my favorite, the blackberries were not that good, but the raspberry was excellent too!
Raspberry infused vodka

[Stan]

You could also infuse vodka with the cherries.

When infusing vodka with tart cherries please make sure you remove the pits first. Pits contain cyanide and it’s leached out by alcohol.

[TheDerek]

Measured my largest CJ trunk yesterday, right at 9" around. It had another coming up just to the right that I cut out this spring that was maybe half the size of this one. Anyone have one bigger? Anyone have pics of their CJ pruned to a dwarf tree form? Seems to be some potential there…

[IowaJer]

Here’s a couple of mine, both in ground since '11. The other 3 CJ’s planted a year later in '12 and are all within an inch or so of these oldest ones.

[TheDerek]

Those are whoppers!

[warmwxrules]

That is good growth! I’m not sure if i should chop my CJ down to a single trunk (right now its a bush). I have a Romeo on order. Need to find a place for it.

Drew (my son’s name is Andrew)
That would be excellent. When i drink its almost always Vodka (which i do very rarely). I find the clear liquors are the safest when it comes to the hangovers. You can get some activated charcoal and run cheap vodka through it a few times…really cleans it up.

[TheDerek]

All others of my CJ were multi-trunked, one has 6 I think actually. This one had 2 but I decided to get rid of the other. Not sure theres in benefit it doing this tho, unless you take all the branches off up 3-4 feet and make a tree out of it. Id like to see someone do this, but in the location I have these it wont work for me right now.

[IowaJer]

I’m not sure if i should chop my CJ down to a single trunk (right now its a bush).

I’ve not done much to mine to date, just planted and that’s about it. I’ve pruned some for height on the biggest one last year, and some lower branches on all of them to allow for mowing, but so far that’s about it. Mine mostly all seem to grow several inches on a single trunk then branch out into the shrubs they are now.

I hadn’t gotten around to pruning while dormant, and now lately we’ve been very, very wet. Of course now we have little green dots all over them as they’re beginning to show leaf. Now I don’t know if I should prune now while we have a few dry days, or just resign myself to thinking I missed my best shot before they broke dormancy, and just not risk any disease issues and wait until after the fruit is harvested this year…

May do some pruning on a couple just to see how it impacts them… IDK, really on the fence.

I’m darn envious of Don3a’s yields on his more manageable height bushes. I think he has achieved the optimum. High yield on 6’+/- bushes. I get the yield now, but they’re going to the moon! Grrrrrrrrrr

[Drew51]

Drew (my son’s name is Andrew)

My name is Andrew, I named my son David Andrew. My high school friends call me Andy, my college friends liked Drew better, it stuck!

You can get some activated charcoal and run cheap vodka through it a few times…really cleans it up.

Wow that’s cool! That is good vodka, I used the bottle because it’s plastic and easy to deal with. Lightweight, less likely to break. I drink Titos or Valentine both excellent.
My favorite infusion is Magnolia vine berries. One of the 50 essential Chinese herbs.

[zendog]

I planted 5 plants from HBUSA in the fall of 2014 and they’re now on their 3rd leaf. I need to fit them into my small yard, so I’m growing them as a hedge along the side of my driveway with a bed of strawberries as an edible ground cover. I expect the strawberries compete some and might be slowing them down, but we harvested a lot of strawberries last year and more importantly they keep the weeds out. The real culprit in keeping these smaller than I might expect are the evil deer that walk down the block noshing on gardens on a regular basis. I spray a raw egg and water mixture which seems to deter them, but the plants still get a pretty good haircut once or twice a year when I forget the spray or we’ve had a lot of rain. Tough plants, dealing with the reflective heat retained from the driveway, high temps and humidity in the summer and a good bit of drought last summer.

Based on the monsters posted in the pics above, I’ll have to do some serious prunning, but that is okay since I sort of imagine them being a hedge eventually. There is about 4 feet between them and there are 2 CP at the back (not really visible) and 3 CJ at the front. One CJ had a few blooms last year (second leaf), but dropped fruit. This year all the CJs had between 50-100 blooms and are dropping pedals now so I’m hoping they retain some cherries for me to taste this year.

Not a great picture, but hopefully shows how they’ve developed. Juliet wasn’t available when I first planted, but I picked up 2 of those last year from Henry Fields and planted them in another location.

[ClothAnnie]

Hbusa crimson passion and Juliet came yesterday (two of each). I opened the box just a little bit peek at them last night and realized that the Crimson passions were super tiny and in little pots. I thought that the Juliet’s were the same although I could tell they were significantly larger, but upon opening them today, all the way up, I realized that they were bare root and I should’ve open them all away up in such them last night. Anyway, I’m soaking them right now. (this post was supposed to be made yesterday but my ph wasn’t cooperating!).

[subdood_ky_z6b]

Your CP looked just like mine when we got them in the mail yesterday. I was supposed to get a 2ft plant, so they made it up by giving a larger Juliet. The Romeo looks to be a bit smaller than the J.

Good luck with yours, looks like we will be getting them the ground at the same time, so I’m curious to see how they progress.

[Drew51]

I got my Juliet some time ago, but it was too muddy to plant, i put it in a root pouch. Today I put it in the ground.

[bradkairdolf]

When I’ve finished drinking this batch I will make another batch, raising the cherry juice to 20% of the volume.

Hi Don, have you thought of using 1 gallon glass carboys rather than the typical 5 gallon one? I use the ones that Carlo Rossi wine comes in and find it to be a really good size for experimenting. That way, you can try out a few different ratios at once.

[MMR_Tulsa6B]

Few Romance Cherry trees waiting in a local nursery. They are labeled ‘Not Ready for Sale’. I think they are from Henry Fields. I did not find the right person to confirm.

[mamuang]

My Juliet from Gurney might be the last one among us. The tree and its roots looks similar to @Johnnysapples.

It is a much better deal than the two puny sticks of a Carmine Jewel and a Crimson Passion that Honeyberry sent me 5-6 years ago when the Romance series just started to gain popularity. Both were dead, unfortunately.

[TheGrog]

Hmm, if I were going to plant one romance cherry in zone 7b (soil is heavy on clay), which would the posters suggest? I’ve got some multi-grafted sweet cherries in ground, but I don’t know how well they are going to do. I’ve read sweet cherries are very hard to grow well.