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Fruit & Orchards

sour cherries

15 years ago

I was wondering if anyone grows sour cherries on here. Im going to plant to here in sw missouri. I was advised against the sweet cherries. Anyways Im going to try two different pie cherry varieites. i was wondering if they were good to eat fresh. Some say when allowed to riped fully they are good fresh. thanks

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Comments (4)

Konrad___far_north
15 years ago
This have been talked about allot, do a search below.

Konrad
jellyman
15 years ago
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
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please, please help me choose a sour cherry tree
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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
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Itesch: You don't say where you are located (and please do), but it is unusual for sour cherry trees in the east to reach the age of 15-20 years without some symptoms of bacterial canker. So I fully agree with the opinion of your local nursery. But even after initial symptoms appear, trees can putz along producing good cherries until limb dieback starts to occur. Then you can lose one limb, then another, and sooner or later its over and you take the tree out. This can be as late as year 25. So don't cut down your old cherry tree yet, at least until your new one is producing. The question of whether this disease can quickly spread to a young tree nearby is more difficult, since there is no yes or no, up or down simple answer. These diseases can spread, but young trees seem pretty well able to resist them, until they themselves get to be over 15 years old. However, it would seem to make sense to plant your new tree as far from the old as possible. I have lost several Northstar, Meteor and Montmorency trees to canker, but they were all over 20 years old. None of them were completely dead, but they were in bad enough shape I decided not to prolong the agony. Right now, I have a Meteor, still producing smaller cherries but in steep decline, in the front yard, and a vigorous 6-year Meteor in the back yard. I did see the beginnings of canker on one branch of the young tree last year and pruned it off. Since then, nothing. So what it boils down to is a judgment call. Young, healthy trees seem able to fight off this disease pretty well. My Montmorency grew considerably larger than the other varieties, both of which had some genetic size control. It got to the point that I could not reach to pick the cherries up on top, even with a good 3-point ladder. That is not a good situation, so try to keep your tree pruned down and spreading if it is on a standard rootstock like Mahaleb as mine was. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA
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Comments (20)
Of the tart cherries, the variety I am aware of with the lowest chill requirement comes from Iran; it is called Albaloo. It would be very happy in zone 9. (Supposedly good flavor but not the most edible flesh surrounding the pit) It is also possible to hybridize sweet cherry with tart cherry; the resulting mixed offspring will eventually develop fruit but the seeds inside that fruit will be sterile. (So what if you hybridized a low chill sweet cherry with Carmine Jewel?) You might also be interested in the cherry variety 'May Duke', if you can find it (the original one).
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While I respect your considered opinion, gg, (thank you for sharing your knowledge) pruning when the tree isn't growing is very much advised against when it comes to stone fruit. No orchard owner here in the PA fruit belt prunes the stone fruit until the very last thing. A snowy winter when it's hard to get into the blocks means that in many years peaches, plums and cherries are pruned when in bloom. It is pretty, but pretty jarring too, to see the orchard floors spread with pink and white bloom. This from Maryland: Stone fruit trees are also very susceptible to a disease called Cystospora canker. If pruned in late winter, the tree cannot protect the pruning wounds from infection by this disease. Prune your trees from budswell through petal fall in the spring. (The bold type is from the MD Extension Service site.) This from Penn State: "The best time to prune is from just before bloom to 2 weeks after petal fall. Do not prune the trees from January through March, and do not prune before budswell. Stone fruit trees are very susceptible to a disease called cytospora canker. If pruned in the winter, the trees cannot protect the pruning wounds from infection by this disease. The exception is sweet cherries, which are best pruned after they have fruited or in early July.
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olga_6b
15 years ago
It all depends on your taste, as already mentioned above. I like sour cherries much more then sweet cherries and can eat a lot of them. To me sweet cherries are too plain, but sour cherries have strong and really nice flavor. My kids are the same way, but my husband will not even touch sour cherries unless they are in the jam, pie or compote.
I would recommend to buy and taste some sour cherries next summer before you make your decision.

I think people really divide into two groups, those who like fruits with strong flavor with some sourness attached and those who prefer milder and sweeter taste.
Another example along the same lines is currants, especially black currant. Many people find them really too sour or even unpleasent tasting. However there is another group of people who really LOVE them.
Olga

Olga
parker25mv
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
Sour cherries have a stronger flavor than sweet cherries. They do taste more "cherry-like", but there is also another flavor present which is not entirely a good thing. I would agree that sour cherries are probably better for cooking, but they are not bad eaten fresh either. They are definitely much less sweet than sweet cherries. I am the type of person who does not like things to be too sweet so I can appreciate this. Then there is the sourness, which will put off some people, but if you like pure unsweetened cranberry juice you will probably like sour cherries too. In my personal opinion, I would not say sour cherries are "better" or "worse" than sweet cherries, but they are substantially different.

I think sour cherries make a good juice, regular sweet cherry juice can be too sweet.

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