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Fruit & Orchards

Stella Cherries appearance

15 years ago

Hi all,

This is our first experience at harvesting cherries from our tree in the San Francisco Bay Area. We have a dwarf Stella Cherry tree, and this is the first year of a real population of fruit for us (year 3). We saw the cherries all turn light red at once, within a period of about 2 weeks in May. After that, we expected them to get darker in a uniform way. However, what happened was the top half of the cherries stayed light/medium red, and the bottom half turned black very quickly, within 1-2 weeks. Is this normal? I have read that the cherries should be very dark when fully ripe, but this looks weird. It's still May now, and I read the cherries should be fully ripe in July.

Has anyone else had this experience?? I looked everywhere and could not find reference to this appearance.

Thanks.

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Comments (4)

fruitnut Z7 4500ft SW TX
15 years ago
The Stella I had for many yrs never had dark cherries. I'd call them medium red. What you have is unusual as to color. But who cares if they taste good. The cherries should be ready to eat soon, not July. Taste a few. If they taste good they are ripe. You better eat them or the birds will.

The Fruitnut
newbie1208
Original Author
15 years ago
Thanks, Fruitnut. I don't think the cherries are ripe, as they are not sweet yet. However, since many of them had the black blotches on the bottom, I decided to pick the whole tree, before they all went bad. I kept the ones without the black. I now have 2 buckets of cherries which are not sweet. I will have to learn to make something which uses lots of sugar. I think next year, I will just leave them on the tree for another month, regardless of appearance.
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newbie1208
Original Author
15 years ago
I took another look at some of the cherries. In the spots where the cherries turn dark (not the whole cherry), they shrivel up -- the skin gets loose and they are squishy underneath. If most of the cherries were already ripe and sweet, I would think this is what "overripe" looks like.
Very strange.
jellyman
15 years ago
Newbie:

What you are describing is not normal ripening for sweet cherries. There is something else going on, probably a fungal infection of some type. Every year is different, and diseases can come and go from year to year. But if this happens to your cherry tree two or three years in a row, you may have to look into dormant spraying with something like copper, or early-season sprays with a fungicide to protect your cherries.

I would start by dormant spraying the tree this winter, just as a precaution.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

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