My cherries must be slow, I don't think any of them(including Juliet) will be ready for another 2 weeks.

They're not suppose to be ready now under normal condition, Juliet and Cupid are one of the best,.. as what I've been hearing.

Juliet and Cupid are the two that have more than a couple cherries on them this year, so I'm very excited! First time tasting them, the birds have always got the one or two cherries they produced in the past. Crimson Passion only has 5 or so cherries this year, but I still covered it, because I really want to try it!

Crimson passion is highest sugar content of the romance series if I'm remembering correctly. Than Juliet ,but Juliet is said to be a lot more victorious than Crimson and from what I've seen it fruits way more similar to evans almost. If I was anybody looking for one of these cherries I'd recommend Juliet or evans ,Juliet taste is worth a bit less cherries I think.

Had a couple of Juliet cherries today..they weren't ready, but I couldn't resist! They still looked fairly dark red on the outside, but the inside wasn't fully ripe. I still thought they were delicious! I'm sure they'd give me a belly-ache if I ate a bunch, but I'll leave the rest for when they are truly ready. Cupid and Crimson Passion are further behind. Mmm..warm off the bush...wonderful!

Juliet is definitely much more vigorous than Crimson Passion for me. Crimson has been my least vigorous, out of Cupid, Juliet, and Romeo. Romeo seems very vigorous and is quickly catching up to my other cherries, even though it was planted 2 years later. No fruit off it yet, though.

Please keep us updated, weeper_11! How about taste of Crimson Passion? Does quality make up for quantity?

Everything on Crimson Passion is still pink for me, so it'll be a little while yet. I'll definitely update once they are ready!

Finally got some fruit off of each variety(except Romeo, which didn't fruit this year). They were dark red and slid very easily off the stem, so I think they were ready. YUM.

Juliet - this is my #1 pick. It is more vigorous/has more cherries than Crimson Passion, and the taste is great. Definitely still has a sour tang, but even after eating a handful, the tang didn't really 'build up' in my mouth..it wasn't over-powering at all.

Crimson Passion - I only got 3 cherries off it this year, so hard to get a really good description off it. But the 3 that I had were quite mild...the tang wasn't very pronounced, and I can see why people would like eating these fresh. Fairly similar taste to Juliet, in my opinion, with maybe less tang...sweet and mild. When I get more off the bush, I'll try to do a better comparison. The reason I don't name this #1 is because it is known to be less vigorous, and that has been my experience. Worth planting, but won't be your high producer.

Cupid - Produced about the same as Juliet, so quite good this year. More of a pronounced tang. With Juliet, the initial burst of flavor tastes more sweet to me, whereas Cupid has some sour right off the bat. Still wonderful for eating fresh, in my opinion...just more like the sour cherry candy.

My husband had some of Cupid and Juliet and said he prefers them to sweet cherries. For myself, I love eating tons of cherries at once ha ha, and so I'm not sure I'd say these are my favorites(at this point anyway..I have yet to taste sour cherry pie/jam/syrup etc.!) but tasting them definitely makes me want to plant more. They do have a stronger 'cherry' taste in my opinion...very intense flavor! I'm very pleased!

Very nice Juliet, probably as good as it cant get,.. has anyone ever seen any of the romance series loaded like sweet cherries or Evans in bunches grow?

I endet up with about a half a dozen Juliet to taste,..pretty good but I need more for evaluation, ..was a bit desapointed with size, also Cupid, compared to Evans, about 2/3 in size.

Evans is my bench standard since nothing really comes close in production and size. The rain two weeks ago has helped for size, [thought I loose them].. never watered them.

Goldenheigths...I'm pretty sure you had a drought also, could you water them?

Evans getting ready

Mmm..beautiful cherries! Both my Juliet and Cupid had cherries in bunches of about 3..not big bunches like that. Maybe it'll improve once it produces more each year.

the romance series do have a different fruiting habit than the evans,they have smaller stature 8ft compared to 14ft for the evans. For me Juliet and Cupid are as large or larger than evans. All my evans trees to this point have been pot grown with root system that is not the best.I have 180 that I have grown from saplings that are fruiting for the first time.I will have a good comparison once they start to load up with cherries.I do water my orchard when the rains don't come.

My Evans dropped tons of fruit but is now done in my yard. The wasps are starting to eat them tasted a few and they are as good as evans gets for me. Does anybody have a good recipe for evans cherry pies ?

we are growing carmine jewel crimson passion romeo and Juliette. The juliets were the last to be planted 2 years ago and have yet to flower. The others were planted the year before and have all flowered last year with a handful of berries which got ate before full ripeness lol. This year the 3 flowered heavily and produced decent amounts of fruit. I'll take a pass on the carmine jewel. The crimson passion is better but the best tasting one is the romeo. It made excellent pies and is decent for eating out of hand. The birds seem to prefer it too.

I'd like to try cupid but I am running out of space

I was able to try all of the romance series cherries along with some others in bc last week minus Crimson passion. I must say montmorency tasted better than all of them.

Every cherry has its perks and most are not ready/prime in the same time.

Anybody grows Lutowka Rose Cherry from Poland, ..think U. of S. used it for crossbreeding. I put two little plugs in last year.

We have a Cupid cherry tree, purchased at a nursery 3 years ago. It has produced well but the tree is very wispy and even though we've picked the cherries the branches don't spring up but droop down like a weeping willow. Also the cherries only grow on last year's growth. Wondering if it should be pruned to harden it up? Does it need to be fertilized?

If it was me, I'd just leave it alone and it'll probably fill in over time. I've never seen it grown as a tree! Mine is a shrub. Hopefully Konrad or someone can chime in, who knows more about this!

I have to correct my earlier statement that none of my U of S cherries have suckered. Juliet has! 2 nice, separate plants growing near the 'mother' plant. I'm pleased! I'll leave them for another year or so to get a little bigger, and then move them to separate spots. I wanted to plant more Juliet cherries anyway, so this is great from my perspective!

Thanks!

Agree,.. leave it alone for a couple of years, weeping is fine, a good start anyway with branches going down,..it will enhance fruiting and you'll have strong branches, ..now you can say I have a weeping cherry, nice!

When tree gets older it will get less weeping.

You might want to cut some lower branches down the road for the sake of working around the tree, ..when branches get larger then some might need to get cut out to get some light in, for now you're fine. Actually, a little shaded is OK for sour cherries.

Wondering if it was grafted, I've seen similar at Canadian Tire.

pruning and fertilizer are not a good idea at this time.Let it set terminal buds then it will harden off.I do not give any any extra water at this time.

Thanks for your help!

bmilsom - my two Cupids look just like that as well - very sparse - not to my liking at all. They had a lot of cherries this year which the magpies and grackles seem to enjoy! I think I might give it a good ``haircut`` next spring and see if that will help it bush out some. Just too wispy for my tastes.

Hello everyone, I have periodically been following this thread for a while now and thought I would post some of my experience with these cherries. Last year we had purchased some small 1.5 foot pots of each of the u of s cherries except for crimson passion and we did not get around to planting them until the fall. However we did get a handful of cherries off of each plant except for the valentines which where loaded with cherries. This year with the plants in the ground we got far fewer cherries on all except for the carmine jewels. I think a big difference was in how we watered them. While they were grown in Potts we watered them daily, and this year due to a busy schedule and a dry season they get much less water which left most of the cherries dropping off mid season. We also planted 10 of each of the romance series out by camrose this year from seedlings and we were pretty amazed at how well they grew (with the exception of the Crimson passions). In the photos I've attached you can see how they went from little twigs about 6-8 inches tall to maybe 2 foot tall plants by the end of the season. I guess they like to be planted while dormant as the growth on my seedlings was far more than the older plants I have.

Hello Cody, thank you for sharing information on these.

Looking good, you might have some freeze back on the green vigor shoots. When you say seedlings...these would be plants grown from seeds, are you sure, if so, then most likely that inferior cherries or no cherry come from these.

Yeah I suppose seedling is the wrong word for these, they we're all grown from tissue cultures. I am a bit worried about all this late rain we have been getting this year but there isn't much I can do about that, so some freeze back could definitely be a problem.

Hi everyone, I too have been following this thread on and off for awhile. Thought I'd ask some questions! I purchased a few each of the Juliet, Cupid and Romeo trees, earlier this spring. The first two were 2 year old tissue culture plants and the Romeo's 1 year old tissue cultures. How old were the romance series trees that you all planted and which ones fruited earliest from plant time? Sadly one of my Romeo's doesn't look like it made it, it only had one pair of green leaves at the top and they dropped off mid-to-late August. I'm in Ontario 4b. I should have it replaced for free though as it had a 1 year guarantee. I bought mine at Treetime.ca, what is everyone else's experiences with where they bought theirs, what seems to be the best price for size? It's going to be torture watching these guys grow but the Juliet and Cupids did seem to grow a lot this first summer.

I have a Van cherry and 2 stellas that were killed almost right to the ground last winter (so harsh) but they all sprouted back near the base... any ideas of how I can protect them so these can become the new trunks? I have cut the old dead trunks down, and was thinking just some burlap wrapped around with leaves inside or something? The same happened with my peach tree... I know living in a dream world trying to have some nice fruit trees in harsher climate lol I have not seen the the romance series trees potted up in hardware type stores in my neck of the woods - hence why I need to buy online. Trying to decide if I'm going to buy crimson passion next spring or a few more of these juliet ones, I like the idea of the larger fruit. Growing some for processing or fresh eating but also for my winemaking :-) Thanks!

also anyone who has planted these in a hedge row, how far apart did you plant them and are you happy with that distance? I wasn't sure if I wanted them to be a thick hedge row, without being able to harvest between them or not. But I did plant them 4-5 feet apart sort of as a privacy screen one one side of my fire pit area (far enough away from the fire pit of course).

The only thing I can really comment on is that all of the romance series seem to take quite awhile to reach maturity and start bearing much of anything. Juliet and Cupid both started bearing fruit this year; Juliet had the most fruit. I bought them as potted plants, they were probably about 2 years old. They were in the ground at my place for probably 3 more years before I saw more than 1 or 2 cherries on each bush. But mine are planted into grass and given little supplemental water, so they might have been slower than most.

Thanks weeper! Mine are sort of planted into grass, more like we dug a trench all the way down (about 3 feet wide) and we have 6" of wood chip mulching filling entire bed (trench)... we have grass that's difficult to control as well, so that's why the trench or path way, definitely things grow faster if you can keep the grass down! I have 3 separate hedge plantings of saskatoon berries too, the one hedge we filled with wood chips and the other two we haven't had a chance yet, that first hedge is much bigger at the end of this summer than the other two which are just in grass. One thing I found that can REALLY handle me nasty grass is the highbush cranberries, they were planted the same year as the saskatoons and they are already 5-6 feet tall. Saskatoons are only 2-3 feet but were tiny bare root plants when I purchased them.

I purchased mine from prairie tech propagation and they all did well except for 2 Crimson passions that seem like they may not have made it. That's out of 60 plants, and overall the Crimson passions did not grow as well as all the others. Some Crimson passions did ok and ended up about 18 inches tall or so but most of them only grew to be maybe around 10 inches tall. The other varieties all grew to be 2-3 feet tall in the same time. I think if you keep your tissue cultures well watered and competitor free for the first year you should have good results.

Crimson Passion are known to be the least vigorous of those varieties, so that makes sense. They do have delicious cherries, though!

Spacing: If you want to maximize fruit per tree, put them about 6 feet apart. This will allow access to all sides of the tree for both sun and picking. If you keep them in grass, you may want them 1 riding mower width + 1 foot apart. If you want to maximize fruit per acre, put them them about 3-4 feet apart, and prune to a multi-trunk semi-open vase.

Row aisles should be the width of the widest thing you will drive down the row + 4 feet. This will still result in tips touching the thing. So a 6 foot tractor = 10 foot aisle minimum, and 12 foot for comfort. If you don't require access to both sides, you can make double rows with a narrower aisle. E.g. if you want to keep them in bare earth then the secondary aisles can be the width of a garden tractor with rototiller plus about 18"

Seedlings: Most are produced by tissue culture. I pick up two boxes (120) from Prairie Tech each year and pot them up into #2 pots. (Romeo this year, Juliet last year) They are about 3 feet tall at the end of 1 year in a pot. It may be possible to start them from cuttings under mist. Some other prunus work that way.

Timing: U of S says fruiting starts in year 3 or 4, and takes about 3 years to ramp up. There is also info on their site as to size and ripening time. One of the advantages of multiple varieties is to spread the picking season.

For the hobby grower I'm becoming more convinced in alternating genuses in orchard layout, as a way to reduce disease spread. E.g. Alternate romance cherries and currants or haskaps. Having a 7 foot gap to the same flavoured leaf is better than a 1 foot gap.

intotheark here (i could not log-in with my original name)

i hope all is well with everyone,

and you get a nice early spring

i am going to share some of my experiences growing about a decade in zone 2b

the pic below is a 'hedge' set-up of romeo and juliet planted 3' apart in a 3'x6' bed

we had no problems picking, but we did prune along the sides, top, bottom and any older shoots

i am not convinced that in the lower zones tart cherries should be grown as standards

a well-managed bush form is the way to go, or multi-stemmed standards from very low to the ground)

if you do have standards protect the trunk from winter sun scald

we never failed to have decent crops from year 2 and onward

we never watered or fertilized, only foliar spray

but we dug very large planting holes or troughs,

as in the above pic the whole 3'x6' space was dug out to a 2' depth

and replaced with our own soil blend, because our soil was like concrete

then weed-mat and thick mulch

here are some pics of an evans that was a standard, but died back severley

i pruned it into a low multi-stem and it grew and produced very well form then on

tart cherries

for flavor the king was black nanking,

a cross between a sand-cherry and a red nanking (very prolific too)

it was bigger than a nanking, with a nice cherry flavor to start and plum finish on the palette

black nanking fruit

black nanking plants

for larger size cherries the rose/lutowka/schatten morrelle that Konrad mentioned were best

they hung on the branches allowing for ample time to finish 'sweetening up',

yes that is a relative term as they are still an acid cherry

but for flavor and least puckering, they win easily over the u of s (altough evans is pretty close behind and is a little more productive than the lutowka)

lutowka grew really aggressively, but they were so good, i removed some adjacent honeyberries/tart cherries to accommodate their growth

i did experience one stem 'gumming out', my guess was sun-scald, so i simply removed the whole stem

low multi-stem lutowka

finally some good news,

i am the new vine-dresser at celista estate winery,

if any of you are in the shuswap this summer, stop in

Edward g- sounds like you think the lutowka cherry is better for fresh eating than all of the u of sk varieties including the sweeter ones like Juliet? do those lutowka cherries grow more tree like as well?

The Polish re-named the German Schattenmorelle as Lutowvka.

Pretty slow growing, bush like or small tree. I've tried it about 20 years ago but only lasted about 3 years at the orchard..winter killed eventually. I'm trying it again, Canada has named it as Rose cherry, don't think any sweeter. For our condition, zone 2 - 3 you're much better off with the U. of. Sk. cherries..Sour cherries

Cupid or Juliet are one of the best from what I hear.

I believe the best of mine is 'Cupid', fruits are large and often have a nice bit of a crunch to them rather like sweet cherries do. I wasn't all that impressed with 'Rose Cherry', trees are on the tender side, fruits quite sour and of low production, Evans is definitely a better choice in my books.

This thread is hot! Love it and keep it coming! Also Edward - your cherry orchard is right off the hook. You're an organized man,

Hi guys, I wanted to find out if anyone else has seen their cherries flowering twice in a single season? A couple of days ago I was out in my garden and noticed that my Juliet shrub had new flowers and a small number of new cherries growing. Anyone else ever see this? Is it due to all the rain this year maybe?

Happens sometimes, I've seen it in other fruits, some say stress related, growth interruption.. nothing to worry about.

This year looks like it will be my best year yet for Cherries, my Romance cherries still have a few years to go before they reach full production but i'm still excited to see the abundance of fruit on the trees so far

Cherries are starting to ripen now :) they look so good at this point it's hard not to start eating them even though i know they are not ripe yet.

Yeah...sour cherries can hang for a very long time, usually I let them be another 2 to 4 weeks when red...they get darker and sweeter! But you can nibble here and there up to this point. lol.

Any one grow this romance sour cherris at Vancouver BC area or PNW USA? What is your results, I have them 1.5 year now, 3 FT tall, I am very scare of its size, It was post the 6FT tall, nowThey post it at 9-12FT tall....

Jack, you will have to start a new post, maybe in the Fruit and Orchard forum or PNW to get an answer to your question.