Good morning, i am sorry to revive such an old thread. I am new to fruit trees, in canadian zone 5b ish. (Its my inderstanding that the official calculation method for zone hardiness differs between canada and USA so i wonder if I should assume i actually am in zone 4b) I hope those who tried sweet cherry in z5 or z4 got some success! I am commenting because I found this publication, in french, of Quebec fruit "production" of cherry and peach. The book is titled "Les fruits du quebec, histoire et traditions des douceurs de la table" from Paul-Louis Martin. Starting page 167 on, he mentions some sour and some sweet cherry varieties that where seemingly commercially grown around here at the time (Village of Abbotsford is zone 4b/5a for example) circa 1800. Since I am not an expert, I might be reading this wrong as he switches from sour to sweet varieties names between paragraphs. (Grillote, Cerise de France, cerise commune et cerise franche are some of the denominations I read, without knowing to which group they belong to, except for Grillote which is montmorency type.) There are some phrases like "Many years ago, a black sweet cherry with a delicious flavor grew largely about Montreal". Later, there is mention of varieties such as May Duke and Black Eagle that grew as cold as Saint-Denis-De-Kamouraska Z4. Here is a link to the google book Les fruits du Quebec Histoire et traditions des douceurs de la table. I dont know it it can be of any help to anyone. Here is a list of varieties, maybe someone knows them and can say what they are and if they could be of interest (1790): May Duke (sour) Morello (sour) Early Black Black Heart Kentish I too am looking for hardy varieties. On my side I see some green on my sweet varieties but I dont think i'm getting much fruit this year, as when I dissected buds in March with razor blades, most had some brown in the center. Thank you for all the great information you provide!

P. serotina: Two adult trees in our yard, several thousand seedlings everywhere. Roughly 99% die in the first year, but that still leaves me with dozens of larger plants that need to be pulled. Fruits disappear before I even see them. Others in our area get heavy infestations of webworms; I wouldn't mind that, so of course mine have none! I'm intending to replace these with trees that are friendly to both wildlife and me!

Potted trees are lots of work and don't think I'll go that route... yet We had a longer cold winter then last year...about the same low temp. of around minus 32C which is the critical temp. for flower buds to die off. More fruiting buds died off then last year. On the Lapin I have a double leader...one completely died back, the other is alive all the way up with all fruiting buds dead, only some lower branches have some fruit on. The other trees are all green to the top but most of the fruiting buds got winter killed also.

Thank you alcan! You sure put it nicely together! Konrad