Where did you buy your Crimson Passion? Thanks.
Thanks!
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Hey all,
I bought all the HoneyBerryUSA romance-series bush-cherry varieties to plant up at my friendās 80 acre place in the Adirondacks NY. I was thinking they are super-hardy so they should be good there.
I wasnāt sure which area to plant them near. I got a few options:
- Thereās alot of pine forest with large openings for the trails around the property. I plant alot of stuff along the trails since we mow the trails every-yearā¦ There is pretty good amount of sunlight on these wide trails.
Seems like alot of brambles and blueberries like to grow in these open areas and the soil is good. - Thereās a creek going through the property. Right before that area is verrrry large & boggy area. But the house sits on high ground and behind the house is a bit more flat area be4 another hill that dips down to the boggy area. The septic system kinda is around there, and things kinda thrive back there. Its not too wet, but can maybe pull from the water-y area if there is a drought?
- an area with alot of sunlight, but alot of sand in the soil. (only brambles seem to do well here)
- a very large open area that has alot of moss-y like plants growing on it (guess not too many trees or brambles grow in this area at all (minus a few pines), cause the moss has a āthick coat over the ground-floorā here hehe).
Remember that this is an area where I canāt water the plants. I usually put a ton of pine needles nowadays to form a nice mulch to keep moisture while we are away from the property. So i need to plant in a place where they wonāt dry out. Hoping the Romance Series cherries donāt need too much human intervention and can survive off rain and sunlight available up there.
Note: I also bought some honeyberries and seaberries from HoneyBerryUSA if someone knows what conditions those plants like.
Any recommendations?
In my experience honey berries donāt like direct sunlight. Kansas sun is very hot. Romance series cherries on the other hand do like direct sunlight. Iāve grown both in alkaline soil very well. Honey berries died here due to the hot Kansas sun in the summer. Sea berries did not seem to care for our alkaline soil and lived for about 2 years in full sunlight but did not grow at all and then died.
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Iāve read that the honeyberry is more suited for the boggy areas, but cherries like good drainage. In the Adirondacks I would think the honeyberries would handle full sun. My honeyberries in sand havenāt produced many berries, so I have now planted some in a low pasture area of fertile clay loam. You will most likely also need to net them, which may be easiest to do in rows.
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Glad that someone revived this thread, as Iām looking to add some tart cherry trees this year.
So, how big are these Romance cherries that yāall have got from Honeyberryusa, what is typical growth for a year, and how soon do they produce? Would you say these are more like a big bush or like a really dwarfish tree when fully grown? I know theyāre tart cherries, but which are the sweetest?
Iāve been considering getting either a Montmorency and/or North Star tree, but they seem to be hard to find on a rootstock thatād be good for my location. Cummins has lots of cherry trees on Mahaleb, but I donāt think thatād be a good RS for my soil, too wet. They do have Mont on Colt, but those arenāt the most cold hardy. I suppose Mazzard or one of the Gisela RS would suit me better here. Any comment on these RS?
Thanks.
In my opinion skip north star and get a Montmorency for a tree. North Star is highly disease resistant but a sparse bearer. Montmorency is a very heavy producer.
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Subdood,
I agree with Clark on North Star over Mont.
Raintree Nursery has several pie/sour cherries to choose from on Gisela rootstock. My cherries are on G 5 which is very cold hardy. If you donāt mind 8-15 ft tall trees, Gisela would be a good choice.
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I got one from there, and one for 7 bucks at another nursery. I canāt tell them apart, both Carmine Jewel. Carmine Jewel is the easiest to grow or seems that way. I think Juliet is the sweetest of the Romance series. The Montmorency might be a better choice? I donāt know? Again all are northern plants. Carmine Jewel grows 6 to 8 feet tall and 6 feet wide. It is a bush, the cherries are fantastic. Small in size, but so are the pits.The color is fantastic, Montmorency, lacks much pigment. Food coloring is added to commercial pies. Almost all are made with Montmorency cherries. If you used Carmine Jewel, you would not need to darken it. This year was the first year I had a decent harvest of them, and no doubt the surprise of the year. Tart yes, but so flavorful, the best fruit this year. They have to be processed, pies, pastryās, preserves, etc.
Still I would take either, nice to have that deep cherry flavor however you can get it. I just want to make clear the Romance series taste like excellent tart cherries. Top rate all the way.
Photo from U of S.
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Carmine Jewell are excellent cherries Carmine Jewell Cherry Yields increasing with age. CJ are heavy producers like montmorency Carmine Jewell is living up to its famous reputation.
What is your fave nursery for romance cherries?
I have other options you guys do not. I live 16 miles away from the Canadian border. Lotās of nurseries there to visit. Honeyberry USA or Henry Fields when they have a sale. I have only ordered one tree from Henry Fields and it was nice. Small, but super healthy. They had some super special on a Carmine Jewel it was only 7 dollars. They have CJ, Romeo and Juliet at decent prices, the plants will be small but should be fine. Romance series grow fast. An 8 inch seedling will fruit in 3 years.
I want a Juliet, it is sweeter. Not as dark as Carmine, but still dark. And cherry pitters work, this is a huge plus if you plan on growing a large number of plants. Even a small number. They are supposed to eventually produce 20 pounds a plant.
You also canāt go wrong with Montmorency, just depends what will work, and your preferences. I have tasted both and I think CJ is better but itās small size is a problem. Juliet sounds ideal.
Armyofda12, You should plant your cherries in the sunniest spot, away from low areas that collect moisture. Remember that these were bred in Saskatchewan, which is much drier than the Adirondacks, and the test fields in Saskatchewan are not irrigated.
Subdood, how big do they get? Well hereās a photo of my Juliet bush in May 2016. Iām 6ā tall and behind the bush for scale. This bush was bought in May 2011, so 5 years in the ground for me. It has always flowered well but up until 2016 it never produced more than a handful or two of cherries per year. 2016 was the first year it fruited heavily, yielding 20-25 pounds from this bush when the fruit matured in July.
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Honeyberry USA has maybe the largest selection, but their plants are only a foot or so tall. Gurneys ā I know, I know ā offers Romeo, Juliet, and Carmine Jewel at three feet.
I started this thread almost 2 years ago, so I think itās time for a detailed update on things. I planted 4 Romance Series cherries in May 2011 (and one tart tree cherry a year earlier ā an Evans or Bali, goes by various names). I had been frustrated up until this year with the RS cherries in that they flowered well each spring but went on to produce not a lot of fruit. I would get a few handfuls, or a few pounds, but no really big harvests. The tree cherry was a bit more reliable, but produced only enough for one pie or a few jars of canned cherries per year. That all changed in 2016, a big harvest of 120 pounds, about 20-25 pounds from each of the Carmine Jewel, Cupid, Juliet, Romeo, and tree cherry. The Carmine Jewel was actually a bit ahead of the others, around 30 pounds.
In previous years I did not have problems with birds on the RS cherries but this year I did. After seeing flocks of birds fly out of the bushes when Iād walk into the garden, I went out and bought a large netā¦ actually a fishing net I thinkā¦ from Lee Valley Tools. This is a nice soft flexible net, not those horrid springy plastic ones, and with one big net I could cover my entire row of RS cherries. The tree tart cherry could not be coveredā¦ well, I would have had to have bought a second net just for one small tree which I wasnāt about to do since the net was expensiveā¦ and I ended up losing half the fruit from the tree. It wouldnāt have been so bad if the birds stole entire cherries, but instead they would peck holes in many cherries, ruining them all.
Netted row - screw you birds! (I only left the net on as long as necessary because I didnāt want to end up snaring birds or other animals. So from when the cherries started turning nicely red to when I harvested them - about 2 weeks or so. No birds, squirrels, or anything else tangled in the net).
Ha, these cherries are off limits to you now, birds!
So what did I do with 120 pounds of cherries? A few pounds were eaten fresh, 5 or 10 pounds were given to a neighbor, a few pounds werenāt ripe at the time of picking and were left on the bushes to sample later in the summer and into the fall, about 1/3 of the rest was made into concentrated cherry juice and canned, and the other 2/3 or so were dried. We donāt have a dehydrator, so my wife and I pitted the cherries, cut them in half, and dried them on parchment paper on cookie sheets in about a 200F oven. This would take about 4 hours per load, and there were numerous loads.
These are Romeo, ready to go into the oven.
And here they are coming out of the oven.
This is a different batch, from the tree cherry, the cherries on the tree cherry that the birds didnāt ruin, and Iāve piled the dried cherries from one tray to show the pile of cherries ready to go into Ziplocks for storage.
Personally I find the dried cherries too sour for my taste. I tried sweetening some by working icing sugar into them, but that just left me with sticky cherries too sour for my taste. My wife, however, loves them. She puts them into salads every day for lunch and has now gone through well over half, perhaps closing in on 2/3 of what we dried.
As for the juice, it is very tasty and I sweetened it when canning to be more to my liking. So far I havenāt actually used much of it as straight juice,but I am testing it out in a cherry-cider I have brewing right now. The apple-concentrate is from a kit, a concentrate from New Zealand that I have had good luck with in the past. This time Iāve added 2.5 litres of cherry juice concentrate to the 23 L carboy, so the cherry juice makes up about 10% of the total volume. Iām hoping it will add some color and some taste but not too much acidity to the finished cider. Taste-test dilutions with water showed me that 5% cherry juice in water gave almost no taste, 20% gave distinct taste but was distinctly tart, and 10% had a subtle cherry taste but very little tartness, so I went with that one. Itās still early in the game, I just moved the brew into a secondary fermenting vessel today so itās a turbid mix of yeast and juice, but the red color is definitely coming through.
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Awesome pics, beautiful cider and what a harvest, Don! I see youāre in zone 3a, where is that if you donāt mind me asking? Youāve prob mentioned earlier in the thread, so sorry for the repeat question.
What would you say is the tastiest of your cherry bushes? How do they compare to your Evans tree?
Are you making hard cherry cider by doing the fermentation, or is that how you make regular cider. Sorry, I donāt really know the difference between regular cider and hard ciders.
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Don, That is such an encouraging report! I have three 8th leaf Carmine Jewels and about a dozen various Romance cherry bushes going on 3rd leaf, so there is hope, then. Last spring the blossoms froze, but I am hopeful for this coming summer. If I get too many, I can always call our friends in to pick for themselves, or try farmerās market, as I donāt know of anyone growing cherries around here. I have the nets ready to go.
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Thanks! Yes, Iām zone 3a in Edmonton, AB, 53.5 degrees North latitude, about 500 km (300 miles west) of where these Romance Series cherries were developed. My climate is similar to the RS cherry breeding area, but my area has a bit milder winters and a bit cooler summers.
Tastiest cherry? Tough to answer since so many things are at play. I prefer all the RS cherries over Evans, mainly because RS cherries are much āmeatierā, whereas Evans is kind of juicy/watery. Otherwise the various cherries pretty much taste the same, it is more a measure of how you like your tart/sweetness balance. Juliet and Cupid I can eat fresh, all the others are too tart for my taste so I can only eat a few fresh.
Soft cider is basically fresh-pressed apple juice, including the apple solids, so tends to be a cloudy beverage that contains zero alcohol and must be consumed relatively quickly before it spoils. Sometimes it is pasteurized to preserve it longer. Hard cider is a fermented brew that is either a fermented version of soft cider or fermented apple juice (apple juice is basically soft cider with the solids removed). Hard cider contains varying levels of alcohol, and the alcohol preserves the juice for longer storage. It is typically carbonated (bubbly), but can be made flat too (no carbonation). In my case Iām adding cherry juice concentrate to apple juice concentrate, so Iām making cherry-cider (alcoholic and carbonated). I didnāt measure the specific gravity of the starting brew to get a handle on its potential alcohol, but from past experience I would guess that this would make a fairly strong cider, in the order of 7% alcohol, maybe even 8%. So it will require a couple or more months in the bottle to mature the alcohol, but once matured it should keep well for a year or two.
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