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Fruit & Orchards

Growing Sweet Cherries

12 years ago

Has anyone had any experience with growing Bing & Van cherries in Massachusetts (Zone 6)? i've read that the Van cherry is a hardy tree and does well here. but i have not found anything that says that a Bing Cherry would do well here.

both trees that i'm looking at are semi-dwarf variety, not sure if that makes a difference....

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Comments (4)

franktank232
12 years ago
Biggest issue will be fruit cracking. Ripe or near ripe cherries will split open if even rained on. Rot/mold take over very quickly and will ruin the fruit in a short amount of time.

Hardiness, you should have no issues in Z6. Make sure you have the right pollinators.
fruitnut Z7 4500ft SW TX
12 years ago
stevin:

Van is a very tasty cherry I think there are better varieties for your humid conditions. Adams County Nursery catalog has very good descriptions of cherries for humid climates. The best quality cherries that Adams recommends not bred in the east may be Benton and Sandra Rose. Lapins is good and self fertile.

In addition there are some older and very new cherries bred and selected in New York. I'd be looking at Black Gold, White Gold, Blackpearl, Burgundypearl, and Ebonypearl. These have been bred and selected in Eastern conditions for reduced cracking.

Here is a link that might be useful: ACN sweet cherries
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User
12 years ago
A "semi-dwarf" sweet cherry tree is likely to grow very, very tall. I would definitely look for a dwarf rootstock instead, if you want to be able to reach the fruit and pick it.
nassauguy26
12 years ago
I'm a novice in LI, NY and I can attest to what ltilton and franktank said. My "semi-dwarf" bing is 25' after it was pruned (life happened and we didn't prune for 10 years LOL). Last year I got one - one cherry. The rest got that funky brown rot. I must say though it was one of the best cherries I ever had. The bing tree was never prolific even though the next door neighbor had a sour cherry tree (50'). I learned some grafting and last year grafted stella, van, lambert, rainier, heldenfingen, and corum onto my bing. My goal is to have a bushel o' cherries this year. Good luck to you and please let us know how it turns out. I thought I'd share.

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