Carmine Jewel cherries flowering
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These are Romance series, Valentine in the middle, then 2 Cupids from both sides of Valentine, then Juliets at the ends of the row. Still tiny, but survived the winter
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Those look very good! Hopefully you will have more cherries than you know what to do with soon! Your deer and rabbit protectors are first rate!
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Where did you get those metal cage protectors?
Only stakes are metal, the rest is plastic. Those are flexible trellises and I attached plastic net to them. They are good as rabbits protection, but not for dear, not so strong. I got them from Lee Valey Tools here in Canada https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/garden/planting/trellises/110887-flexible-multi-shape-trellis?item=PL138 , got net separetely from Home Depot. For each tree I used 4 sets, for smaller trees 3 was enough.
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I was told by a propagation company that the University of Saskatchewan cut a deal with Gardens Alive which now has the US distribution rights to all their cherries. Wowza is distinct from the others, selected by Gardens Alive based on their own trials. Iāve had it in the ground since last spring and can say it is quite vigorous, very shrub-like growth and now about four feet tall though no fruit yet.
So who knows what it is.
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My Wowza has a few blooms this year. Am curious to taste it.
I am also finding you donāt need to go overboard with multiples of any one variety, as they send up suckers like crazy if you can wait a couple years.
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Since Sweet Thing has been out for a few years now and a few of you have it, has anyone gotten any fruit yet?
One āproblemā with experiment stations is that they have all kinds of sour cherry hybrid seedlings growing all over the place and pollination is rampant. (They donāt have much of an idea if a hybrid such as Crimson Passion is mostly self sterile with hundreds of other hybrids in the area.) I do have the Crimson Passion and yes, it is horrible at production. This same āproblemā affects the hybrid plums. The experiment stations are growing hundreds of hybrid plum seedlings (Pipestone, Toka, Superior, etc) and they probably get crops every year.) I planted several of these hybrids 40 years ago and right away I got fruits off of all of them. 40 years later, I only have the Pipestone, it blooms every year, and even with lots of wild plums around, I do not get any fruit. Much of the problem is late frosts, but I donāt think the experiment stations realize their advantage in having a mass of similar seedlings still requires testing of their introductions in farm situations where there are very few pollinators. Getting off the subject a little, I look at the parentage of the Black Ice plum. It is a cross of the sand cherry with two tender plums probably from California. How can one get a hardy plum by crossing one hardy sand cherry with two nonhardy plums?
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Thatās exactly what Rick Sawatzky suspected years ago when I talked to him. The series just had been announced and I called him about the potential for growing in the Kansas area. He thought disease pressure from heat and humidity would limit their use.
Iām guessing Iām a little late, but welcome to our forum 6mt6. I have to agree more pollinators always gives better results. I have all of the romance cherries except carmine jewel. The first 2 sour cherries I planted in 2016 were CP and Evans. I once considered starting a thread ācrimson passion the unloved sisterā I have only had moderate yields from all of my sour cherries, but CP although smaller than Evans yields equally to it and romeo and juliet. My first cupid died, so still waiting for the second one to produce. Earlier in this thread I thought I had purchased all of the newly released sour cherries. Apparently the propagator did not hold up his end of the bargain so I am still waiting. I would like a discussion of BIP hardiness in zone 4, but I think it needs itās own thread.
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I havenāt paid attention to this thread for quite some time but finally got a chance to catch up.
I find it funny that people complaint about suckers. I get a ton from my Romeo bush and each one is literally $20 coming out of the ground. Heck I encourage suckers; at the end of the season I may find a fat root and cut it near the plant; thatās at least 8 suckers coming up the next year.
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I have āsweet Thingā and ācutie pieā, but only 2 feet high. I will probably able to compare with ājulietā and āromeoā in 2024.
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I am hoping I can run the Wowzas through my antique crank cherry pitter I bought at an antique store recently. I tried it on two quarts of thawed Carmine Jewels, and it missed over 100 pits! Thatās the pits! Hope I get some Wowzas to produce this year to test them out.
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Arenāt Wowza (āBig Redā?) like three times larger and more heart shaped than Carmine Jewel? Iād imagine they would probably fit better (unless theyāre too large).
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I donāt think the cherry size matters as much with this pitter as the pit size. The pitter kind of mangles the cherry and is then supposed to let the flesh go through a crack while the pit continues out a chute. U-tube shows it working very well on tree cherries with their larger pits. The Carmine Jewel pits just go through the crack along with the flesh.
I have an old cast iron pitter that doesnt work at all with CJ, but works pretty good with Julietā¦ Still occasionally a pit will sneak through, but few enough to make it nice to use. It does mangle the cherries pretty good, but for preserves and stuff that doesnt matter much.
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It is fun to chase the greatest and the latest, and I do have five different UoS bush cherries, but I must say that some oldies are solid performers. I have a small montmorency tree going into the third year and even as a tiny sapling on year one it pushed more cherries than I thought possible. Looks like once it gets to a good size it will produce a ridiculous amount of tasty cherries.
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