Sand cherries

thank you. Hansen’s it is!

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Any nurseries that you know of that would ship sand cherries to California? I found two nurseries but they don’t ship to California.

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Is it because they are known to the State of California to cause cancer? :}

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But they only cause cancer if you are in California, right? :joy:

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Our sand cherry fruited for the first time this summer and I thought it tasted quite good. However, there were only two cherries, one for my wife and one for me.

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You may want another for cross pollination?

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my cherry and apricot wall features 2 of 3 hansen’s from gurneys

Cherry Row/wall - General Fruit Growing - Growing Fruit

The first year I had maybe 6 lucky berries and the second year 0. There has been no significant growth.

I should have taken a picture of the row without leaves. I will do so in the future but currently everything is buried under 2+ feet of snow.

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Hey Pete! It’s Jesse from our email exchanges. I didn’t know you were on here too :+1:

I bought the Hansens Bush cherries from North Ridge a few years back, and also sand cherries from Cold Stream Farm that turned out to be Western. Through this post I learned they are the same lol. I thought they looked similar but I was using them as a short border row and wasn’t really observing them.

I was doing some searching looking for an Eastern source and came across a cultivar called Jade Parade that is a hybrid between Eastern and Susquehanna. I just bought one from Jung Seed.

Here is the link to its creation. Cheers

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For anyone considering sand cherries for fruit, there is a tremendous amount of variability among plants—even within ‘Hansen’s.’ This comes from a trial in Wisconsin where the plants were ordered from a well-respected nursery, yet the plants were clearly not the same. The plants I have are definitely different as well.

Because of this variability, I suspect Gurney’s would be the best option for anyone seeking sand cherries for fruit, since they were the company through which Hansen originally sold his cherries. That is—unless someone happens to find one of the named Hansen’s bush cherry cultivars.

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Creek Plum Jesse! You are a total plant nerd! Awesome!
man, i just bought from Jung; saw the plant (by total dumb luck) and said no. i just scanned your article and NOW i’m really intrigued.
IT CHECKS THE BOXES: “parents: Prunus pumila var. depressa and P. p. var. susquehanae”
ATTRACTIVE: it’s “taller, faster growing plant with larger flowers … ‘UCONNPP002’ sandcherry is a profuse bloomer with showy, white flowers in spring….”
OMG: i got another weirdo to track down, “Prunus pumila var. besseyi ‘P011S’ Pawnee Buttes®”
Candidly, i’ve shut the door on my buying after 30 days of crazed buying. i’ve made notes of this plant and ur article. and maybe we’ll trade root stock – maybe i’ll try to propagate the Creek Plum by root cutting and you look for suckers on the vigorous UCONNPP002.

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Deal!

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Here’s a source.

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thank you! i’m on the wait list … which gives me time to find the space :slight_smile:

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ColdStream is mainly a re-seller now, not a grower. The -exact- ID of their stock will depend on the accuracy of their wholesale supplier, which can be variable, and then their supplier can change from year to year anyway. This is fine for plants grown from seed for more non-specific uses, but is not going to give the same results as selected cultivars propagated by cuttings or grafts.

As I mentioned once, a whole lot of besseyi has been planted east of the Mississippi over the decades. Unless Sand Cherry has been collected from natural sites a good distance from any Human sites, anything can be happening with plants labeled “Sand Cherry.”For example, some planted seed production areas for v. besseyi in the Great Lakes can sit not far (as in, on same or adjacent parcel of land) from natural populations of v. pumila. That’s all fine for most planting applications, but would cause chaos in growing for best possible edible fruit.

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