We have all heard a lot of stories about trees that grow well but there are none better than Carmine Jewell tart cherries. They grew a lot during the winter and even the suckers flowered! It looks like it could wind up being a good cherry year weather permitting.
Beautiful bushes! How old are they?
Very nice! You’re way ahead of me, I only have a handful in full bloom. Most are at real tiny popcorn stage, or less. Supposed to dip to 24 tonight so I’m glad they’re lagging.
They’re ahead of my ER & NorthStar though. (What I’m really worried about is the peaches in full bloom)
Hope you stay warm enough with all those nice petals showing! I will say that we got a late freeze last year and it didn’t seem to matter on my CJ’s, they still gave me a lot of cherries.
I looked back at my notes and I’ve written “4/22/15 - Was 29 degrees this morning - All cherries in full bloom now, so we’ll see”
And I had picked 16 gallons off of 5 CJ’s last summer. I record the gallons picked, although I think mostly people talk in pounds. I’ve read where a gallon of tart cherries with the pits will go between 3 1/2 & 4 pounds (I’m going to check that out this year for myself) but if that’s so, then you could say between 56 & 64 pounds rather than 16 gallons. And I had also got hit with cherry rain crack and tossed quite a few too.
Anyway, they’re hardy for me and yet I’m still nervous about tonight…
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Klondike_Mike,
I think that row is on the sixth year in the ground.
IowaJer,
Our low tonight is 34 so it looks like everything is ok. 16 Gallons is fantastic production! Mine had been a little light but they seem to get better every year. The Northstar was heavy last year but they wound up wormy so they were unusable. Montmorency is still small but it produced a few cherries and put on a few feet of growth. My girlfriends tree is what I grafted the Montmorency from and we pick those by the 5 gallon bucket full.
Do you have to spray for plum curculio or are they naturally resistant? Thanks, Bill
PC is a new worry for me so I’m not sure I can answer that. I saw my first adult PC about a year ago. I don’t grow much stone fruit in comparison to other things Bill. Pears do not have the PC problems like stone fruit which is mostly what I grow. I do spray for insects which would include PC but it’s not a specific spray for them.
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Clark! I’m in zone 7a, and I still do not have one bloom. Also expecting a dusting of snow tomorrow again! 
Mrsg47,
That does not seem fair! Snow in zone 7 this time of year? Hopefully you will have blooms and warm weather very soon!
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xxoo
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I’m in zone 7a after this winter too, and my Crimson Passion isn’t anywhere near bloom either.
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Chills,
Zone 7 weather this year seems to be less predictable than normal. Your weather always seems very even in comparison to ours. I wonder how it will affect the ripening times of your fruit.
Clark, this the first time when I see that Carmine jewel can be prolific. Usually I saw the tiny puny plants on the pictures. A little bit more and I may consider to plant it.
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The plants sent out from Nurseries typically are not very big. Once the plant is actually established they are unstoppable.
Antmary: All five of mine came as small twigs and went in '11 & '12. The thing is, I planted my North Star cherry tree in ‘11 too. It was maybe a 3-4’ planting and it’s still not as big as my CJ’s, nor does it give near the crop. I have high hopes that will change going forward though. (I did get some VERY large bare root CJ’s last year from HBUSA but not for planting here. I’m real interested to see how those do compared to how my twigs have done. They were really nice bare root plantings)
Anyway, if this works here’s a picture of my CJ’s from June of 2012. The bigger three were planted in '11 and the other two in '12.
Leap frog forward to last summer. That’s a 5’ fence BTW. The circumference of the trunks are bigger than the North Star too, you can barely touch your fingers when checking for size. They’re just stout plantings, that size up incredibly fast.
My only knock on them so far has been the rain crack issue, but I kinda don’t think that will be an issue on normal (non-record setting) rain years.
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Thanks, Clark and Jerry, I have Carmine jewel graft and if it take I’ll try to root the cuttings this year or the next year.
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Speaking of little plantings, I just now had the mailman deliver my two Juliet plants from HBUSA. They’re pretty dang small but I don’t care, I knew that going in.
If you look at that pix above there are actually 7 bushes there; 5 CJ’s, and at the very end there are 2 Crimson Passion’s. You can only see the one from this angle, but the point is, the 2 CP’s were planted on 4/16/14 and that shot above is a year later. So I’m real happy with how they’ve done. (No flowers on them this year BTW)
Anyway, I’m just hoping that these little Juliet’s do as well. HBUSA did forewarn me that the CP’s were a bit more finicky than the CJ’s, but they’ve done fine for me.
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Wow! IowaJer. My first carmine jewel was planted as a twig in fall of '08. Now I have about a dozen of them, as well as crimson passions, romeos, and juliets. None of my bushes are even remotely that big, and I tasted my first couple cherries for the first time last summer. They weren’t even fully ripe, but were tasty. I was bowled over by the 3 huge romeo bushes that Gurneys sent last spring–huge bushes three feet tall and nearly as wide! It was the first year they were available, so maybe Gurneys had to grow them longer than they had expected. I was one happy camper!
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Northwoodswis4,
Mine sat in the ground and did nothing and I finally added some old cow manure on top of the ground , a coffee cup of magnesium per tree, a cup of azomite, 3 inches of wood chips on each and they took off. Dirt is not always good enough for everything in my experience at my location.
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My brother-in-law planted a couple and they haven’t done much either. I’ve taken down my pictures for now until I can figure out how have them only show the picture and not take you back to my entire photobucket album if you click on it. That’s gonna have to wait since I’m running late and need to get rolling. Hopefully I can get back on here before end of day Sunday evening. If not Monday morning. Maybe I’ll know by then how to use photobucket…
Well, I think I have it now. What a difference a day makes! Got home around 6ish tonight (tripped down to Lawrence to catch Mellencamp) and my CJ’s are about 30% blossomed out. Got pretty warm yesterday afternoon and today. I even saw a lone mason bee messing around at that hour. First bee of any kind that I’ve seen this year.
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