'Rainier' vs 'Napoleon' Cherry

General Fruit Growing
1

Hello, I hope everyone is doing well.

I have been ridiculously happy lately for some reason. :wink:

Does anyone have an opinion about Rainier versus Napoleon cherries, a.k.a. Queen Anne cherries?

I like firm cherries if that helps but I was just wondering who all has tried both and has a favorite one over the other.

I also saw a cherry called Governor Wood, but I think that one might not be as firm of flesh.

Any input or opinions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much and I hope y’all have a great day.

2

Number 1 & 4 on the list. I would suggest White Gold.

3

I hadn’t heard of white gold, thank you, but we have a Montmorency and an English Morello for pie.

For fresh eating, Ranier or Napoleon (Queen Anne)?

4

Only have Rainier. If napoleon was better it would be more popular. You never see it in the store and hardly anyone grows it.

White Gold IMO is maybe the best of the sweet white cherries.

5

I was thinking the same thing.

I looked up white gold. It looks like a great variety.

I was trying to get a good variety and so I have Rainier on my order for 2025 at TOA. It will be our first and probably only yellow cherry.

I love cherries and I’m not sure how things will go, but it looks promising. Our Utah giant just went in the ground not long ago and this last season it gave us six cherries. I couldn’t believe it and even though they were small, the flavor was good and held great promise.

Our little tiny bing cherry in a pot was loaded with cherries, and it started looking very sad so we removed all the cherries. We felt like the fruit was sucking the life out of the tree and we’d rather have the tree than one crop of cherries. We need to get it in the ground, but I’m not doing it until we have everything to protect it. The deer really put a dent in some of our new growth this year. It looks great now I think we did the right thing.

For the pie cherries, we have the Montmorency and the English Morello.

For sweet cherries, we have Craig’s Crimson, Utah Giant, Bing, Black Tartarian, Black Pearl, and then we will end up with Rainier.

Utah giant is the only one in the ground. But it was also the biggest tree.

I ended up cutting a branch off of Craig Crimson because I just didn’t like the way it looked. It had four branches and now only has three, but I had this gut feeling that that branch had a disease that I sprayed it a few times and it looks fine now, I have no idea if that’s a good cherry or not.

I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t making a mistake picking Rainier over Napoleon. I love Rainier, but I don’t know if I’ve ever had Napoleon or Governor wood for that matter.

6

So you have Rainier and white gold?

Are you in an area that is wet in the summer?

7

Here is all that I have. It’s been dry, but normally it’s to much rain.

8

Thank you for linking to that. I really enjoyed reading it.

I love it when people share their experiences with the different fruit trees.

Reading your opinion on Montmorency makes me very happy I ordered it.

I’ve never got to try them fresh. They are impossible to find, and so is English Morello, which I also have not tried fresh or maybe any other way either.

When is the best time to take fruiting wood off of cherry trees and graft onto other trees?

9

Late winter is the best time to take scions. Grafting is best when the trees are starting to leaf out. Montmorency is probably the best of the sour cherries in every way. Many of the sour varieties are kind of stingy producers.

10

I hope ours does well, I’m super excited about cherry pie.

When do you buy the rootstock when you’re ready to graft?

I was looking to make whole new trees rather than graft onto an already planted tree.

11

Store in a bag in the fridge till the trees are starting to leaf out.

12

Store in fridge wrapped in saran wrap?

They will be bigger, so I don’t know if if a bag will work in this case.

13

Just throw in a ziplock bag. I usually use about 8 inches of scion. That will fit in a ziplock. Not sure if I would store in saran wrap. Some people graft rootstock immediately, but I think it does much better if you let the rootstock grow in it’s location a year first.

14

Rainier was pretty soft when I grew it. Maybe it was just my growing conditions. But Bing and many others were better.

15

Oh, what a bummer to hear!

The rainier cherries I have tried were not soft but I have not grown them yet.

Have you grown other yellow blush cherry varieties?

16

Grafted mine over, but if you want one with some real crunch to it, you should try Hudson.

1 Like
17

For firm white cherries my go to would be Vega, it’s firmer than both of them.

2 Likes