Matt,
This is what Starks said about Halford rootstocks which sounds pretty good! Halford Rootstock
Looking for a standard-size, highly productive peach rootstock with good disease resistance and adaptability? Choose Halford, which is now available for Carolina Belle and Flamin’ Fury® peach trees. Better suited for high-pH soils, and can be grown from Texas to as far north as Michigan. Even shows some tolerance of poor drainage, and has fewer problems with iron and zinc uptake.
Well, I’ve got a grafted quince coming, and have already taken delivery of quince seeds, 3 kinds. There will be purple raspberries showing up in my mail box in April or May, floricane bearing, so as to have earlier fruit than the two kinds of primocane ones I already have. I’ll have some seedling blackberries and nut pines big enough to go out in open ground this spring. The chestnut grafts might be big enough too. Will be playing with some new squash and beans too, and may have sewed up a scion exchange for apples…ah, play time 
Am readjusting the backyard orchard as some things don’t work out. Most exciting to me? Getting Brownlees Russet, Cornish Gilliflower, St. Edmunds and Glockenapfel.
OK, after going almost cross-eyed from all the research I’ve been doing, I finally ordered some items last night.
From Honeyberryusa, I ordered one each of the following:
Crimson Passion tart cherry bush
Romeo tart cherry bush
Juliet tart cherry bush
Jeanne gooseberry
Should be delivered by the first of April.
I don’t remember having gooseberry, but my wife said they grew them here on the farm years ago, and she liked them. She said they are sweet/tart, about the size of large grapes. I’m looking at picking up a Poorman and Black Velvet GB from Indiana Berry along with some blueberry plants later.
I wanted some kind of tart cherry, and was bouncing between these Romance Series cherries and a Montmorency or North Star tree, and thought the bushes would be easier to manage, and protect from animals with netting. If left on the bushes long enough, they ought to develop decent brix. I found some good info on these bushes here:
http://www.agriculture.gov.sk.ca/apps/adf/ADFAdminReport/20090405.pdf
There will be more orders to come from other vendors. Is very exciting to know that some items are on the way.
I’m looking to add a few more apple, a pear, a couple apricot and maybe a nect tree soon, in addition to some new strawberry and blueberry plants.
I think that’s the right call- I’m pretty happy with the bush cherries productivity. I’m not sure about getting the brix high, as I haven’t let them hang long enough. I’m going to attempt to completely top-work my North Star with some ARS varieties. Maybe it isn’t a great spot for cherries, though it gets quite a bit of sun. The NS seems to have productivity issues for me. It also gets blossom blight and brown rot, something I haven’t seen on the bush cherries. I tried to graft over it last year, but I think I missed the window and was a bit late. If it doesn’t work again this year, I’ll probably just put a jujube in the spot.
I think Sweet/tart is about right for gooseberries. Jeanne tilts a bit more toward sweet and was one of my favorites, but never put on much growth.
Bob,
I have the same issues with northstar and plan to top work mine with montmorency.
Yep, it was a tough call re the cherry trees vs bushes, but the two factors that mattered to me was management and price. A Monty or NS tree just about anywhere I looked is about $35. The CP was $25, but it’s supposed to be about 2ft tall when shipped, the others were less than $20, although a bit shorter. But, they do grow pretty well, although it may be a couple years at least before they produce. I figured a tree would take about as long.
How have your RS bushes done, production wise, and how would you rate the flavor of each one?
Who knows, maybe Lowe’s will have a Monty tree when the fruit trees come in, I might chance one of those, if it’s a decent price.
I did the one GB with the cherry bushes because it’s $20 shipping for 4 items, and I needed to add one more item to make it a foursome.
Indiana Berry sells blueberry and gooseberry at $8 a plant, so I’m probably going with them for those items. Their strawberry prices run kinda high, as opposed to Nourse’s, so I’ll go with Nourse for strawbs.
I was debating whether the Hinnomaki’s would be better than the Black Velvet, taste or production wise. What is your comment on those varieties?
Have you dug out from Snowpocalypse 2017 yet? I saw yer attire yesterday and snow blower. It looked like it wouldn’t be up to the task, with it being an electric and all that snow.
I like both Honnomaki’s better in terms of taste compared to Black Velvet. BV is the strongest grower by far. Right before the recent snow, I was out cutting some wood, climbing down a ladder and almost caught my head on a very thorny BV cane which reached almost 8’ high and got caught in the plum tree’s branch. In terms of fruit, the issue I see with BV is that it is a bit more tart and tends to have quite a few smaller berries. When really ripened (dark black), they do taste pretty good with a blueberry flavor. But I like Hinnomaki Red better (larger berries and sweeter). Hinnomaki Yellow is even sweeter than red, but puts on very little growth, similar to Jeanne.
That’s what I did a few years ago from HD- $19.97 for a nice one (well branched, nice bush-like structure) which I almost killed in a pot. It recovered some last year after planting, so I look forward to comparing it to the bush cherries.
I have a Hinnomaki Yellow here, and with a bucket of poultry manure on it each spring, it is still a small bush. The berries are very sweet though.
It’s easy to root more, stays under the snow line, the usual snow line, grin, and crops reliabley.
OK, thanks for the info. I think I will go with a Poorman, and a H Red. I showed pics of Poorman berries to my wife and she said it looks like the ones she had years ago. She mentioned that they were pretty big fruit, larger than a grape.
I read that gooseberry are notoriously thorny plants, can you tell a difference between your varieties in that aspect? I think I read that Jeanne are not as prickly as other versions.
Any reports on the flavor and production of your cherry bushes?
Thanks.
I also am getting interested in the bush cherries, I put in a planting of four of them this fall. My Monty generally does pretty well but it is prone to bugs and occasionally rots.
I tried them once before but the deer munched them to death. Its too bad there are not larger ones available for purchase, the Honeyberry USA ones are too small. This time I am going to completely protect them for the first year in a tube.
I haven’t really babied my gooseberries- just plant, mulch and forget. At least until the leaves started getting eaten by bugs (I think it was the gooseberry sawfly). It took a couple years for me to ID it and do something about it, but Spinosad powder worked nicely on them. Much better than the year I tried to squish them all by hand…
Even so, Hinnomaki Yellow has done OK, but small. I think my in-ground Jeanne died. I planted the potted one at a rental last year, so we’ll see how it does.
Not all that different for me than other sour cherries. But I think the issue was that I didn’t leave them long enough. I haven’t netted them, so if I wait, I get almost none. The sweetest so far has been Danube, but it sets far too few cherries to be worthwhile. 5-10 on a decent sized tree. I started top-working it last year and have both ARS varieties and a couple sweets on it, just because I hate the idea of wasting a good rootstock.
I don’t think the bush cherries were completely immune to rots, but they got a lot less than North Star. And that is even with me letting them get too close together and overgrown. They can also get cherry fruit fly and/or PC. But a very productive, healthy, large bush is hard to beat for cherries.
Which bush-cherry varieties did you choose?
Romeo, Juliet, and Crimson Passion…
I was moving several of my gooseberries and currants to a new spot today. They were in a spot too shaded and I had mostly been ignoring them for the last five years. It was interesting that only two varieties seemed to have any vigor, and many had completely died. Of the gooseberries only Poorman was left, and of the currants only Minaj Smyriou was going well. I tried many different varieties of gooses and currants and killed a great many. The only red currant still cranking is Red Lake.
Of the blackberries I had a planting of maybe 20 varieties near to these currants, and only the Orus 2816-3 has any vigor now so I pulled all the rest. It was too hot on the south hill they were on, but 2816-3 seems to do OK with it.
Wow you must have quite the operation puttin 78 red havens out.
I’ve not ordered a single thing this year as I keep telling myself no more trees. I planned to graft a little. But the bush cherries keep calling me. I love cherries and these seem easier to grow than sweets. I cant really think of a good way to fit them into my landscape. Do they grow well in containers? I’ve also thought about blackberries and grapes too but think I’d rather have the cherries.
Speedster, You WILL break down and order something. Whether there is space or not is irrelevant.
As much as anything, as I think they can handle the occasional dryness, being native to the prairies. I don’t do well with container plants, but a Carmine Jewel did very well for me in a fabric pot, until I decided that it had enough chill and I would bring it into the living room for Christmas. It looked great in full flower, but didn’t leaf out properly and has spent the last 2 years recovering (now limping along in ground).
I’ve lost some red currants (Red Start has been pretty bad). And Orus 8(?) died pretty quick. So far, the white currants have been OK (White Imperial, Primus, and Pink Champagne). Poorman has grown OK, but defoliates with leaf spot.
For black currants, Minaj Smyriou has done OK, but I’m more optimistic about some of the new ones I planted in 2015. At least a couple of them had very large berries, which would greatly speed up the picking process. Consort makes great jam (lots of flavor), but is really time consuming to pick.
That’s a hot, dry hill if blackberries won’t grow. They are like weeds in my yard. Triple Crown just keeps growing and the trailing ones (Newberry and Boysenberry) make a lot of 15-20+’ long canes. It’s a problem to keep things tidy (not as bad as hardy kiwi, but pretty vigorous…).
We are a small operation with big aspirations. Peaches are always a bit dicey in Maine but it has really been fun growing them so far. I pretty much accept that peach trees will have to be replaced quite frequently or there might not be much of a crop some seasons. Red Haven have produced quite well in another orchard a few miles from me and I really like the look and taste of them…and I feel our customers will too.