I'll be getting there to Alberta in about a week. when I get there I would like to see what you have. All of the cherry groups in prunus are out-crossers which means in order to get good seedlings out of them you will need to have them crossed with another cherry. Your 'evans' may be able to self fertilize to give fruit but the seeds may not germinate, if they do they will likely be weak ones like the ones you (and others I've heard from) have. Some of my experience of what I have just said comes from papers about self fertile sweet cherry and how hard it is to bring out "selfers" like for example 'lapins' cherry is one of those. The papers are not handy for me right now to give you a link to them. They were written to breeders because sometimes there is a good reason that something has to be preserved. If your getting anything on selfed evans seedlings like flowers on them then that's pretty good. You can try to back cross and if it goes well I think you can escape the problem of infertility which is another thing. Are the flowers fertile? Such are the problems with inbreeding because they usually can't produce flowers and when they do you would be lucky if they are fertile. The hardest part is finding the first back-cross to make a fruit. After that everything becomes easier with every generation but it is still going to become easier to keep crossing sister plants rather than selfing.

I haven't paid attention to pit size,...the Evans on pin root stock are less soggy, which makes them tastier. I'm thinking, this is because pin cherry is not as vigor as Evans, the cherries are slightly smaller but firmer. Not sure what bing graft you refer to? All I've done new on sweet cherry this year, I bark grafted a Kristin to Evans. When my root cellar ever gets finished I'll try to grow some of them in pots and store them over winter in there. One way to grow them outside is to train low branches along the ground and hope for snow cover, the low Stella branch on Evans did prove to me one year with lots of cherries. My Stella on Evans has died because the whole Evans tree died, it was getting old, around 20 years...now I lost Stella! This Evans tree never suckered over these years,..just now, I see one little guy coming up about 3 feet away. Surprisingly, I've picked a couple of Vandalay and Skeena cherries off the trees about 4 feet up this year due to a mild last winter.

Thank you intotheark for letting us know on this Lutowka cherry. I'd be interested to test it for myself. As the Evans, [my bench mark standard]..can you please tell us the size difference, do you have picture side by side? Also production overall in %. As you and me said, Evans cant be beat in it's vigor and production, another nice darker flesh cherry, reliable, is nice to have around. Got this from a friend, ..after all, this cherry didn't originate out of Poland, ..link translated from Polish.... It is very old of unknown origin, possibly French or Dutch Here is a link that might be useful: Åutówka

Quite honestly once you have bough a plant it's your's to do what ever you want with it except sell it in the case of patented plants. Controlling personal propagation of a patented plant is completely and utterly impossible and impracticle, so go ahead. There hasn't been a single precedent set arresting anyone who has. Openly propagating for commercial resale opens you up to possible trouble but they would need to do a DNA test to ascertain it's the patented cultivar. As there are at least six or seven cultivars now that's also quite difficult as they have all got the same genes just different growth characteristics. Technically you could simply say you took cuttings from wild plants. As they are not a hybrid but a species with various growth forms. They are very easily propagated. Wait for a new flush of growth when it warms up in Spring or whenever in your climate then take cuttings. They are very skinny so take a load of them cutting half an inch bellow a node. As they produce milky latex sap you need to stop them "bleeding" as quickly as possible. Either dip them in ash or burn the cut end (not the node) for ten seconds or so with a lighter. Let the ends dry if dipped by leaving the cuttings in a safe place out of the sun for half an hour or so, wont take long. Then plant. As they are so skinny they tend to break if you try and push them into the ground so make holes with a dibbler in the seedling compost first. I find the sharp end of a chopstick very useful for this. Then gently push them in and water once and leave. Kept warm and just moist they form roots very quickly. There might be some leaf drop initially but dont worry about that, they soon recover. I put about five in a pot to get a nice bushy plant. That's it very easy. You can also simply root them in a glass of water in bright but not direct sunlight light in a window sill. Once rooted and growing it pays to shear very lightly occasionally to get a bushier plant. Good luck.