It has been a cold rainy spring here, with only a few dry days since May, but Thurs thru Sat took the cake with over 5" of rain (we are over 10" above normal). The cherries which were doing OK got hammered, over half cracked. and they are still not ripe. Any good ideas on how to salvage the rest from rot?
Eric
Oh no! I can’t grow cherries, but they are my favorite fruit and seeing all those beautiful cherries split is just heartbreaking. I’m sorry I don’t have any advice about preventing rot, just wanted to let you know I feel for you.
Can you do anything with the split ones at this point? I know they’re not ripe, but perhaps you could add sugar and make jam? (Just spitballing–I haven’t actually done it myself, just hate to see them go to waste.)
I can pray bit will stop raining for you until you get the rest of the harvest in. Those are some great looking cherries and I sure hate to see that.
To spray against rot, get either Bonide Infuse or Indar. I don’t know Bonide PHI. Indar, it is 0 PHI.
At least it will stop the rot. If you don’t spray, any cracked cherries are likely to rot. I never use Infuse but use Indar. It is effective.
Cracking and rotting is the main issue with a variety that I removed.
Beautiful cherries! Such a sad sight, I can only imagine how you must be feeling.
When my Carmine Jewel got hit with cherry rain crack in the past it was a punch to the gut.
In my reading up on it at that time, I’d ran across an article that talked about sweet cherry commercial growers out west spraying a product that allowed the cherries to shed the rain. Prior to this I just assumed it was a root up-take thing.
I’d probably consider doing as noted above and hit them with a fungicide to guard against mold, etc., then at least you could have a little cleaner area to work in once those that didn’t crack ripen up and you’re able to harvest them.
I don’t juice anything, so I nothing about it at all, but I know Clark does. I wonder if it’d be such a thing that you could quick harvest some of the cracked (although not not fully ripe) ones and still juice them?
Just feel really bad for you.
Those pictures make me sad. Sorry to see that.
How sad! That is a whole year’s effort.
Is it possible to salvage them? Like soaking in brandy, dehydrating, or pickling?
What a shame…other than how they look, will the cracks ruin the flavor? was going to suggest you use them for preserves or something like that.
Hello Eric,
Very disheartening to see your pictures.
We get a good amount of rainfall here which can cause cracking in veggies as well as fruit. I’ve been experimenting (successfully so far) with using diluted Elmers glue to reduce water absorption by the leaves of susceptible varieties, including tomatoes. The problem is not the ‘rot’ but the expansion which causes a breech in the natural defense of the fruit.
This can happen again and if you haven’t come up with another solution this may help, and it is non toxic.
Sorry to see your cherries split like that. I had rain like that last year, 5 inches of rain in a two day period. I had some rootstocks that split because of so much rain in such a short of a period. Not a good situation in such a short time.