We’ve had several drenching downpours right as my Montmorency cherries are ripening. A few have cracked, but its not too bad. If the soft fleshed sweet cherries had the same incidence of cracking, I’d plant a few. Can anyone compare cracking in soft fleshed sweet cherries (e.g. Black Tartarian, Governor Wood) to sour cherries like Montmorency?
My limited experience with the soft-flesh sweets (I have four but they have not fruited much) is they are not much different than a crack-resistant sweet. This year nothing has cracked much in spite of a lot of rain. White and Black Gold and Sandra Rose were the firm sweets and Waterloo and Black Eagle were the soft sweets.
Z-Tom,
Good question. I’m interested in learning from folks’ experiences with this topic too.
I am growing Black Tartarian (no fruit yet) and plan to grow Black Eagle and Governor Wood…
Scott, what are your impressions of Waterloo? Gophers took out my tree before it fruited and I am considering whether to replace it with another Waterloo or a different variety in the fall. Thanks.
How about the semi new “Pearl” series from Cornell, might be too new for anyone to have gotten fruit… I’m curious to how they fair vs the “Gold” series, especially in the humid North-East & Mid-Atlantic.
Blackpearl is on my “wanted” list.
Waterloo seems like a really nice cherry. Its not as small or soft as the usual old cherry variety, and the taste is very good. The only problem is it has gotten several cankers that I had to cut out.
I looked into the Pearl series at some point and it didn’t get uniformly high reviews. But there isn’t a lot of data on it. The Black and White Gold have been out there a lot longer and there is a lot more experience with them.
Sandra Rose gave me a few cherries this year, they were really good. There was some big cherry taste test I found and Sandra Rose was at or near the top. I was concerned it would have crack or rot problems but it did great on both fronts, better than Black Gold this year.
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I like Lapins. Its had some rot, some cracked fruit…but not too horrible for how wet its been. Cherries have been huge. If i find my camera i’ll take some pics.
If you could keep a tree small enough you could just tarp it during wet periods… might help some.
warmxrules -
I’d be interested in seeing some pics of your Lapins. I have a two year old Lapins that made it through this winter unharmed, but no fruit. How is the flavor?