Wow, that’s an excellent goal, and I can see a demand for that too. What white are you using? I have Burbank’s and I did have Nettleton’s. I did not like Nettleton’s flavor at all, the berries were bigger though. I pulled it as the fruit was not going to be picked. Burbanks is producing small berries, but man they are very tasty. Unless somehow I got cultivars mixed up? The Burbank has leaves that look like hemp, I was told that is the burbank, but never confirmed it.OK, I just did some research and did confirm it.
I’m excited about my raspberry cross that grows 5 times faster than other raspberries, I’m hoping this vigor is expressed in production. I may have a very worthy candidate to develop for commercial markets. I have only seen about 15 seedlings and this one is in another league.
I gave it some thought and a little research. One problem I found is both parents you selected are self-incompatible. Self-incompatible is not a desire on the plant to get different DNA is more like an immune system response to reject unwanted DNA. The ovum when it detects undesired DNA aborts the pollen tube and stops fertilization. The Nadia used a Semi-self-incompatible plum as the seed parent and didn’t even try to get seeds from the cherry parent. Maybe next year you should try two self-fertile types that bloom at the same time.
There were no cherries or plums blooming at the time when I did the cross-pollination. I tagged each and every flower with yarn that I pollinated with Rainier Cherry Pollen. I also did the same thing with the Indian Free Peach Pollen.
I only have Burbank’s, I wanted to try Nettleton’s and Crystal White also but can’t find them. from what I understand using pollen from another variety on the whites is the only way to keep the white color if you use pollen from the whites on the blacks they stay black. it’s going to be a fun little experiment.
To increase the odds of obtaining an interspecific hybrid, today, I pollinated a couple of Indian Free Peach flowers with Black Tartarian Cherry pollen; and to keep a record in here, I tagged them with grey yarn.
I found this research paper. It mentions that Cherry’s are closer related to Apricots then peaches. It also has a nice break down of which cultivars are closer related to each other. Trying more distant related cherries might help locate one that can cross easier.
Is Rainier Cherry a self-fertile variety, or this means that cross pollination from the peach was a success?
Rainier is not self fertile. So those were pollinated by something. My question would be did you protect the flowers from cross pollination by something other than the peach pollen?
The tree could still abort them too… Something similar to June drop of apples could happen. I think Olpea has said something about having peaches drop poorly pollinated or damaged fruit at the pit-hardening stage.
interspecific’s are possible, but the chances of a good-fruited ‘hybrid’ occurring in one’s backyard is perhaps the same chances of winning the lottery. And that is just the beginning, as following up on the seedlings/waiting for them to fruit are two more painstaking steps…Especially with many drupes-- hardiness and disease/pest-resistance(growing on their own roots) are two other variables which could ruin the endeavor. Zaiger’s probably also grows theirs in close-to-sterile conditions( to tide them over to fruit-production), and grafts them to several varieties of rootstoc to test for performance, apart from growing them outdoors.
drenching the branches of two unrelated species(prior to their bud blossoms unraveling) with lots of water, then immediately bagging them together in an improvised plastic bag with a window patched with the smallest pored filtrete(or even better, with n-95) is probably the only low-cost way of assuring selective, and exclusive pollination in a backyard setting.
To be honest, Steve, this time I didn’t covered them because the only trees that were in bloom were my Indian Free Peach tree, and my neighbor’s peach trees were just starting to flower. I also didn’t bothered to covered them because bee activity was very scarce this year, so the chances of pollen contamination was very low, that’s what I think.
By the time that I created this thread, a week had already passed since I started hand pollinating the cherry flowers. So those fruits that appear in the pictures are from the first flowers that started to bloom. To help me remember which flowers I pollinated with peach pollen, I marked them with red yarn.
At first, I had no plans of creating a peach x cherry hybrid. I decided to cross pollinate them with peach pollen because there were no cherry trees blooming with Rainier so I didn’t wanted this tree to go fruitless or with a few fruit this year. I also invested a lot of time and money on this cherry tree, so I didn’t wanted my efforts that I put on this tree to go to waste.
I also pollinated the last blossoms with Tartarian, Bing, and Stella Cherry pollen. However, those flowers haven’t developed into fruit, yet. All these three cherries started blooming this week.
When my trees are in bloom, we have very little bee activity, it’s way too cold, the wind does it and it works very well. I don’t think I ever seen a bee on them? Some other insects like flies could be doing it too.
These might be hybrids but there is no way to be sure right now. Without strict controls it is a guessing game. I’m optimistic that they are inter-specifics and I would plant out the seed just in case they are. Because these crosses are rare I would duplicate the cross next year but with a more controlled environment. This is my dream fruit so it is interesting. Peach size fruit that taste like a great tasting cherry and to top it off it would grow well in my zone. Good luck with it, Bill
Good luck with your fruit ITW. Hard to tell from the pics but it looks like you got a lot of fruit set. What percentage of the flowers that you pollinated with IF Peach set fruit? I don’t have any self-infertile cherries but from comments on the forum here, it seems that many cherries can, at times, be finicky with fruit set (at least some varieties in some locations). In addition to synchronizing bloom times, there seems to be some incompatibility between cultivars where the blooms overlap. I’m not sure if that is because they are too closely related or not related enough (or maybe some other factor).
If they were not pollinated by the peach, they were probably pollinated by a plum, but not by a cherry. The reason been is that where I live, most residents don’t even have fruit trees, it’s my neighbor and I who have the most trees. And I haven’t seen another cherry tree besides my neighbor’s.
In case that they were pollinated by a cherry tree, I will still plant them and choose a couple of seedlings for breeding stocks.
Yeah for sure you need to grow some of them out.I wish i had more room. One reason I’m working with brambles, plus you see fruit in 1.5 years from your cross. I will do more with trees some day, but I’m pretty happy with my Arctic Glo x Indian Free cross. Although I have tons of ideas too. I probably won’t be able to stop myself, this yer so far and it’s almost April first, looking good for a great season for me with fruiting trees.
Ulises! You are really serious about what you are doing. Have you tried writing to Zaiger and asking them for an internship! I think it would remove a ton of guessing and take you through the stages of breeding stone fruit in a proper fashion. Think about this. xxoo Mrs. G
That is a really good suggestion. Good job MrsG!
I will do that in the near future.