Update on discussion w/ @BobVance and @mamuang about Danube cherries. The one tree in my backyard only produced about a couple pounds of cherries this year, despite the pretty bloom. I put in 20 of these trees at the farm, but I think I will graft them over to Jubileum. The Jubileum in my back yard produced 30 lbs. Not super productive either, but acceptable. Although the Jubileum it’s been clearly more productive per branch space. I’m tired of waiting on the Danube. Just not very productive.
Disappointing MSU would release such a poor producing cultivar for commercial production.
Btw, I normally honor patents and don’t propagate actively patented material, but in this case both Danube and Jubileum are under patent by the same outfit, so I’ve already paid the patent fees in the new Danube trees I won’t be using. So I don’t feel bad about grafting them over to Jubileum.
Mine had yet another light set. It’s hard to say how many will hold, as a lot of them are still small (the kind which often fall off). The total could again be 10-20 cherries. The only place on the tree with 3 cherries within a few inches is on one of the grafts (Black Gold).
I’m always pretty reluctant to remove a tree, but I’m tempted here. I’m a bit disillusioned with tree cherries (sweet or sour) and thinking that it is better to just go with the bush variety (which I think I have enough of). I’m very tempted to re-purpose the spot (full sun) with a peach, persimmon, or jujube.
I suppose another possibility is to graft bush cherries onto it. But I’m already experimenting with that on the North Star.
I took a look and I think Jubileum is Trademarked/Registered, not patented. My understanding was that it affects how you market it. So if you propagated, you could sell them as “Sour cherries”, but not under the “Jubileum” name. Like “Pink Lady” vs “Cripps Pink”.
Bob,
If you don’t mind a soft texture, Black Gold is really precocious. I’ll post my Black Gold this year later. It’s really loaded every year. It tastes all right, but not in the same ballpark as my favorite Rainier or Bing.
My Danube also set just a few cherries. It seemed like there will be a crop, there were many small green ones, but then they dried out and fell, I am not sure is it due to Monilinia laxa or just bad set. I will start to regraft it next spring. Why not to put sweet cherries on it? I like the tree shape and the size so I want to utilize it. I am reluctant to order new cherry scions from USDA again. The main advantage for me is that sweet cherries do not suffer from moniliniosis much, although they do have brown rot.
Thanks Bob. For some reason I thought I’d remembered MSU was patenting those varieties. I even found a reference to one of the cherries as PPAF. But I started looking, and using Google’s patent search, I searched for either one of the Erdi varieties and came up with nothing. I noticed Adams charged me a royalty on the Danube trees, but perhaps that was just for the trademark?
How did they taste? I got a handful of cherries off my small Danube. It’s the first fruit from the tree, and I tasted periodically to try to find the ripest time to pick them. They are not really edible fresh which was disappointing to me. I am hoping that they will improve next year, but there was just about no sweetness at all. Like eating a sour patch candy.
Danube and Jubileum both taste pretty good. The thing is you have to let them sit a long time on the tree. They will just get darker and darker (and sweeter). They get bright red right away, but those are sour. If you wait till they get pretty dark, they are pretty good.
The neighbor kids eat them right off the tree and like them. I can’t tell much difference in taste b/t Danube and Jubileum they both need to sit on the tree a long time. I sold 25 quarts of Jubileum yesterday, which was all I had left on my one tree. Most of the customers thought them decently sweet enough.
It tasted very good for a sour cherry. Like @Olpea said, you need to let them hang for a long time (watch out for birds). Mine looked even darker red than the ones in Olpea’s picture.
Hmm, I think I got right in a similar color range. I had a couple rot on the tree so I picked them, but even the ones that were almost squishy were mule kick to the mouth tart!
I took a picture next to a Rubbermaid lid for reference.
Those look about like mine. But mule kick tart doesn’t sound like mine. For sure these cherries don’t taste as sweet as peaches or grapes, or even sweet apples, but they aren’t that tart to me.
Sometimes the first cherry seems a little tart, but if I eat a few more they start to taste about right (for cherries). Of course if I just brushed my teeth or spit out some gum, they don’t taste very good comparatively at all.
I’ve noticed some people are pretty sensitive to sweet/sour, really eschewing any acid/sour. Others recognize the deep flavor and like the balanced sweet/acid in these cherries. I’m not putting you in either category, but simply mentioning it as a possibility. I’ve certainly had customers who thought Jubileum cherries inedible, as well as those with the same opinion about all but the very sweetest peaches.
It’s good that Olpea raised the question re. taste buds. I, for one, have sensitive teeth and do not like to eat sour fruit (not anymore). I don’t like Granny Smith apple because it’s too sour for me.
So, with the sensitive teeth I have, I don’t find Danube tart at all. Since they fruited only few for me. I did not take any pic before I removed the tree. The two darkest cherries on your pic looked like mine.
Now I wonder how confident you are that what you have is a real Danube.
I would have said I liked sour fruit, in general. I’m really hoping it’s a “first fruiting” kind of problem, since it’s a small tree in a not great spot, and hopefully next year will taste radically different. I’m going to try cooking them into some kind of sauce for pork chops.
My Danube is from Raintree, so I’d be disappointed if it was mislabeled. I already had to clear out a bunch of mislabeled stone fruit from Willis Orchards. I don’t think a single thing they sent me was correct.
My is from Schlabach. Judging from the fact that the tree was full of flowers and set about 20-40 cherries a year, I think mine was Danube .
It has fruit for 3 years and the fruit tasted about the same every year. I had my daughter and my husband tried them. They did not complain about any sourness of the cherries.
I just learned that word bőtermő in the Hungarian name of Danube (Érdi bőtermő) means “fruitful” or “good cropper”. Maybe your climates are not conductive for Danube’s fruit setting? I had a single Danube graft this spring and it immediately set four fruits. (Unfortunately, I had a bunch of other grafts from the ARS scionwood on that Krymsk-5 rootstock and the entire plant eventually died from Monilinia infection.)
I tried Sturmer Pippin because it does well in dry and hot situations. It is extolled in Australia and parts of Britain (perhaps chalk downs.) It is also PSF and has frost tolerant bloom - mid season. Pretty persuasive, in my estimate. The fruit was beset with cork and bitter pit the first season. We added several quarts of mashed eggshells for earthworms to work into the soil within the dripline. The folowing season the fruit still had bitter pit nearly all over. What flesh I could sample was 13 Brix and very tasty right at harvest, but it was a surgical procedure to get to it.
I hacked it down to about 18 inches and grafted over it this season. Now it appears to simply be dying. So, will cut it to the ground. Next year one of the successful grafts of GoldRush or the single Keepsake that took this season can go next to the stump.
If you have a fair amount of calcium in your soil and good summer and winter, give it a try. I think Sturmer is still an apple that can so well in the States, if the soil is not acidic.
We will be removing 2 sweet cherries on Giesla 5. They have been in the ground for 18 yrs., we have gotten one small crop a few years ago. The cherries are the size of tip of your pinkie and the scions have overgrown the rootstock and one tree is dying. They shade my apples; adios cherries.
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