The climate in New Zealand…would it be like Zone 8-10 or do you get ’cold’ weather in your Winters? I live in southern California and as you know, we dont get much ’rain’ let alone temperatures below 50* almost all year long. i visited Campbell Town Scotland once and that temperture remained cool and damp most of the year…(I was informed)…and though i always wanted to ’see’ Australia and New Zealand, i never got an invite so i don’t know the climate. a great encouragement to guys like us is to watch videos on Youtube about growing Food Forests!!!!…and those guys amazing success about all types of ideas!!!!!

Hi Kubotabx2200, Thank so much for your suggestion. I have been debating a lot between NorthStar and Montmorency. Its not an easy decision for me. I love the look of dark red cherries. And they say NorthStar bears heavily too. And it stays a small tree. But since I already have two red cherries, my husband is pushing to get the dwarf Montmorency. Besides, my neighbor has a standard Montmorency (I am certain its a Montmorency, he does not know) and the birds and squirrels don't eat the fruit and they are tasty when cooked. Can you describe the flavor of NorthStar to me if you a little time? Yeshwant, I got my Surefire from Raintree and I planted it in 2004. It is a small tree no doubt. Now its just about 6 feet or so and upright. Last year it had flowers but set only a few fruit that fell off. This year it had many clusters of flowers and all of them have turned to baby fruit. I have big hopes for this tree(!) I don't have a picture of the tree in bloom but I could still take a picture now. But for the life of me I can't figure out how to post a picture into a message? So the answer is I think you will have to wait 2-3 years for good fruit on the Gisella 5 rootstock that Raintree sold it on. I live around Riverdale. Some parts of my yard does seem like 7a but some parts are definitely colder. The trouble with Starkbros is not that they sell you poor trees but that they don't tell you what the rootstock is so I don't have some important information. But I still did get some trees from Starkbros in the past and I ordered dwarfs only. However some of my trees turned out not to be dwarfs, they are huge. So I find them hit-or-miss. I think your Suerfire will grow quite a bit more, specially this year but it won't be a big tree. If I figure out how post pictures I will share. Katyajini

Brandon: Sure, sour cherries are good to eat fresh, if you like your cherries tart. Do you? Yes, they become sweeter if left on the tree until very dark red. But risks also increase with the passage of time, and the cherries become more attractive to birds as they sweeten up, just as they would to you. In the final analysis, whether or not you will like tart cherries is a matter of your taste, and Gardenwebbers cannot really figure that out. We eat a few ripe tart cherries right from the tree, and so do the grandchildren, but most of them are frozen for sauce or pies, to which some sugar is added. I have grown Northstar, Montmorency, and Meteor, and found that Northstar is slightly more tart than the yellow fleshed amarelles, but it also has beautiful, dark-red juice. Konrad is right that this same sort of question has been asked before, but hey, lots of the questions here have been asked over, and over and over and ................ over. I don't mind that. I just wish people would tell us where the hell they are located. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

On the 5th day, drain off all the water. Cut cucumbers into chunks. Make the syrup, pour over the cut up cucumbers. Then, each day for 3 more days, pour off the syrup, bring syrup with the spice bag to a boil and pour back over the chunks of cucumbers. On the 4th day of the syrup, drain off, boil, pack pickles into jars, pour over the hot syrup, seal jars, and process in the BWB. It is 3 days. The 4th day as you heat the syrup, you pack the pickles in the jars and can them.