Sujiwan: 1. The two common types of sour cherries are the Richmond type (of which Montmorency is one variety, Meteor is another), and the English Morello type, of which Northstar is one variety, as well as the new Surefire variety. Richmond type cherries have yellow flesh and lighter colored juice, while the Morellos have dark red interiors and produce a much darker juice. Montmorency is historically the dominant sour cherry variety planted in the U.S., so if you can remember that your grandmother's cherries had yellow interiors, the trees were almost certainly Montmorency if planted in the 50's or 60's. If the cherries were dark red inside they could have been the old English Morello, though that is less likely. The genetic dwarf Northstar was not yet around at that time. I have grown both types, and prefer the Montmorency, although there are enthusiastic partisans of the darker Morello cherries, which are more common in Europe. 2. The only major pest of sour cherries is the cherry fruit fly, which may not have been present at your grandmother's location, but is fairly common in the the mid-Atlantic region. I have seen it on my own cherries at pitting time, where it shows up as a small white worm surrounded by black frass, close to the pit. The best ways to deal with the cherry fruit fly are to pick the trees clean at the end of the season, which prevents the larvae in infested cherries from dropping down to the ground to pupate. It is also helpful to hoe around the base of the trees once or twice during the winter, which exposes pupae in the ground to cold and drying and kills them. I still grow sour cherries, and almost never see the fruit fly today, although we pick and freeze over 25 quarts every season, and still have some to give to the neighbors. I do not spray sour cherry trees except for dormant treatments with oil and copper. This helps to prevent aphids, and the copper helps to delay onset of bacterial canker disease, which is responsible for the early demise of most cherry trees in the Mid-Atlantic region. Branches showing canker infection should be removed as soon as they are identified, since the cankers can spread. 3. Birds can show great interest in sour cherries, depending on the species you have around and their numbers. Robins and Mockingbirds are the most common customers for cherries here, although a mature cherry tree can be so productive that there are usually enough for both birds and people. That has certainly been the case for me. I don't think we lose more that about 10% of the cherries to birds. 4. A Montmorency cherry on a full-size rootstock such as Mahaleb or Mazzard can become quite large -- as much as 25-30 feet when mature -- which can put most of the cherries out of range of your ladder unless the tree is regularly pruned down. Montmorency on a dwarfing rootstock such as Gisela 5 may be more practical for a smaller yard, especially if you want to minimize future pruning. My personal preference is for the Meteor variety, a Richmond type that mimics Montmorency in every respect, but has some genetic dwarfing that keeps the tree at about 12-14 feet. Meteor is usually available from Gurney's Nursery, though I don't see it at many others. I have grown a large Montmorency (now removed) a couple of Northstars (removed due to bacterial diease), and currently have two Meteors, one fully 25 years old and one youngster of 5 years. The older tree has seen some canker, but I keep pruning it off and the tree keeps producing lots of cherries. 5. For Denninmi: If you had Northstar trees, you have grown Morello type cherries. I agree that the Northstar is particular canker prone, and checks out early. I also found the Morello cherries to be slightly smaller and more tart, although the dark juice is beautiful. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Northern: I have Balaton, North Star,Sure Crop and Mesabi tart cherry in my orchard. Balaton is the best for fresh eating as very dark purple fruit and the sweetest tart cherry I have ever tasted. My daughter will eat them off the tree but not the other tart cherry varieties. Only bad news on Balaton is that in youth it is slow to come into bearing and does not yield as heavily as some of the others. My North Star is perhaps my favorite as very heavy bearing and I like the fact that I can easily keep it trimmed to 8' in height so easy to cover with netting when the fruit ripens. My best yield on my North Star was 28 quarts (measured after pitting). Sadly it now is full of bacterial blight the past 3 years and I cannot get it under control. I tried copper and had no luck. I also have Surecrop from Stark Nursery. Appears to be an amarelle type as has yellow flesh and a hot pink skin color. Very juicy and cooks up nice. It was very slow to bear as waited 5 years for the first crop. My Mesabi was an accident. It got shipped to the nursery I work at by mistake so it was free for the taking. It is a young tree and growing well. Picked the first crop off it last year and bloomed well this year. The flavor,yield and hardiness are fine. I have not had it long enough to comment further on it. A friend in Minnesota grows Mesabi and tells me the only issue for him is that the fruit is very thin walled (fleshed) compared to other tart cherries. Another friend who grows tart cherries (5 varieties for his U-pick orchard) tried it and told me the same. I don't mind since the tree was free and I mix them with my other varieties anyway after pitting. The BEST yielding tart cherry I have come across is Sweet Cherry Pie (TM) now released thru Bailey Nursery in Minnesota. I sampled it 23 years ago while visiting Bill Eubank (his selection) near River Falls WI. Bears heavily at a young age with fantastic yields. A friend trialed this cherry at his orchard and found it usually out yielded all the other commercial varieties he grows in tart cherries. It is officially out on the market this year. Since you are in Minnesota you should be able to get one at any garden center that carries fruit trees from Bailey Nursery.

For freezing cherries, I wash, then pit the cherries with a crank cherry pitter. It crushes the fruit, but then your pies or cobblers or sauces are entirely cherry rather than a few whole cherries with lots of filler around them and you can go through a gallon of cherries in just a few minutes. Hand pitting individually is way too time consuming. The pitted cherries are placed in a quart plastic container or a bag, then frozen. I don't add any sugar when freezing, though you can. Just don't know how they will be used, so don't add sugar until cooking later. A quart of frozen cherries is about right for making a pie. When cooking the cherries later, I usually reduce the sugar by 1/4 to 1/2, depending on just how tart the cherries are--I don't like syrupy sweet cherry pie and prefer a sweetened pie that still has some of the tartness of the cherry--much more flavor, and you don't get a stomach ache from all the sugar so you can eat more! Also, Minute Tapioca is a great way to thicken the cherry juice. There is a recipe on the box, just reduce the sugar. A quick version is 4 cups frozen, pitted cherries in their own juice, 3/4 cups sugar, 2 tablespoons tapioca, a tablespoon of butter, and 3 or 4 drops of almond extract. Another great way to thicken the cherry juice when making toppings is to add a tablespoon or two of corn starch with your sugar and cook. When the corn starch thickens, the juice will turn clear. As long as you warn everyone, for a topping you can freeze the cherries whole, then make sauce, and people can just spit out the pits.

Rob, our Evans cherries produce huge amounts of large fruit and we are not that far away from you. Likely your Evans are seedlings. We have 3 problems with Evans, Brown rot due to the size of the clusters, Blossom blast in wet years ( bacterial canker wiping out the blossoms), and the jam they make is very light in color, pinkish, so we mix in darker cherries to get redder color. If you would like to try grafting some of our Evans onto your rootstock you can come and get some this winter. We have grafted Balaton, Meteor, and Sure Fire onto Evans trees, and while the graft unions swell and look bad, the trees grow to good size and produce well. What I have been doing when top grafting larger branches is putting a pencil sized scion into a "t" graft on the top surface of the branch, heavily cutting back the rest of the foliage on the branch (but leave some), and letting it grow and get vigorous for a year before cutting the main branch above the graft. This lessens the amount of time the wood is open before it heals over. Painting the stub with copper then applying bees wax from a toilet ring (very sticky) seems to seal it from everything except canker, but I do not have scientific evidence this really helps.