Love those dark cherries too! The best price for us is around July 4th. I planted 2 sour pie cherry trees about 3 years ago, and am getting enough for pie and preserves. So much fun, except fighting the birds for them. I use nets.

We're getting worms in our cherries where we didn't before. So mostly I just let the birds have them. Bummer. One year a robin built her nest in the cherry tree. Pretty smart, I thought.

Luckily they are no where near that price here. I just saw some pretty ones at HEB but didn't buy any.

I wait until the local cherry crop is ripe before I buy - end of June usually - much better prices!! And sweeter and better taste than imported ones. But I have to be careful and not buy too many, as I tend to eat them all in a single evening. Remember the Witches of Eastwick?? That's me with fresh cherries :-)) Not a happy situation, LOL!!

I don't know the exact price around here but somewhere around the 6 $ mark. I can't and I won't pay it. I could go up the mountain when the Amish are selling them and probably pay 2 $. I'm quite angry at the Amish for their puppy mills all over the place but their produce is lovely and I do buy it.

I like them, but I like them better when they aren't bagged up already and I can pick out the ones I want. I like the ones that are really dark and firm....those are the sweetest ones. I really ate a lot of them when I was pregnant. I remember after my daughter was born, I left her for a few minutes with my husband because I just had to drive to the store and get some cherries. I had a c section and I wasn't supposed to be doing that much....and I recall getting so weak, I didn't think I would make back to the car, but I got the cherries.

Right now I am hungry for some watermelon. I hate the seedless variety.....I think when they hybridized to get rid of the seeds, they got rid of a lot of the flavor. It gets harder and harder to find a good watermelon. I never see the old Charleston Grays.....those were good, and so were the Black Diamonds, although harder to pick out a good Black Diamond than the others. My favorite personal sized watermelon is Sugar Baby, but very seldom see them in stores. I used to raise those when I had a garden. Hope to again some day.

I buy one basket of local cherries when they come into season. We really enjoy them, but when that basket is gone, we're satisfied.

My true love is the local peach crop. The season is short - maybe six weeks, but boy do I indulge. The farmers market is my favorite place to get the as they've been harvested within 24 hours of being taken to the market. Last year, we were at an ice cream place that had peach ice cream from the local peaches. A seasonal flavor that they have only a few weeks of the year; it was so, so good. Hoping to get a scoop of that later this year!

I love them and have them mixed in with my blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, and watermelon every day for lunch. I'm sad when the season ends and prefer local berries but I buy them year round when available. I am the only one on my family who likes them. My grandmother had a cherry tree and my mother baked the best sour cherry pies.

They're my favorite fruit!

Some years I get a taste for fresh cherries, some years I don't. I've never had them straight from the tree. Is there a big difference in flavor, versus what you can get in an average grocery store?

Another short-season fruit I like, are figs ( ... is figs?) Oh, and blackberries. I like blackberries better than raspberries or strawberries.

"Is there a big difference in flavor, versus what you can get in an average grocery store?"

I think so.

The southern SF Bay area used to be a big stone fruit producer - apricots, plums, cherries, peaches, etc. Most of the orchards have been cut down and replaced by buildings for tech sector companies and residential developments.

There's one guy from a family that was a big grower years back (the Mariani family) who continues to run an orchard for premium fruit. For those in the Bay Area, Andy's Orchard, run by Andy Mariani, is in Morgan Hill and is the place to sample fruit that tastes like that from days gone by. He holds "tasting events" on several weekend days through the summer to sample a wide variety of heirloom and new hybrid types that have been picked from his trees. On these special days (for which there's an admission charge) you can also take a guided tour through the orchards and pick your own. Or buy in the store. The freshly picked fruit that's no more than several hundred yards from the tree where grown, or those right off the tree, is indescribable. Huge cherries, firm and sweet. The first event day is usually Fathers Day for cherries (they ripen first) and all the days are relatively crowded, considering what it is. Alternatively, you can drive down there on any other day and they have a store selling whatever is in season.

He has a website with the specifics and more info on his operation.

I ran into Walmart just got back a little bit ago. I checked the cherry prices. .5.97 a pound. Sighing I went for the grapes. They had the white or red both 4.97 a pound. Sigh. I ended up with a few bananas and because I really wanted to surprise the boys I bought a half pound of cherries to go along with their breakfast. I hated the price but the boys love cherries so much. 3$ won't kill me and the boys will go off to school happy.

The 4 pounds I picked up yesterday are gone. :(

They were good too. SO told me he was gonna hide my cherry pitter to slow me down next time. (Like that will work.. psshhht)

Planted cherry trees? Yeah for you. I hope those survive and bear fruit. (I do not know your location.) I do know that cherries can be grown at locations south of Champaign, IL. They are successful in Door County, WI of all places. Cherries, in general, are not successful anywhere else in Wisconsin. Most of Wisconsin is subject to a late frost after the spring warm-up begins. These late frosts kills the pollen and pollen receptors of the cherry blossom thus decimating the crop and sometimes leaf buds, too. However, Door county is a peninsula sticking out in the cold waters of Lake Michigan. This natural refrigerator tends to delay the cherry trees from coming out of dormancy allowing them to escape late frosts. In Door county, cherries bloom about a month late and the crop does not ripen until August.

When you planted, I suppose you were aware that there are two basic kinds of cherries: the sweet and the sour. Sweet cherries are not self pollinating and require a pollinator. Sour cherries are self pollinating. Therefore, a single sour cherry tree may bear fruit whereas a single sweet cherry tree will not.

Oh I know all about door county cherries. I was born in WI, even though we moved down here to alabama when I was a baby. We would go every summer and stock up. There is one store up there,I can't recall the name,that sold the BEST cherry butter. (Like apple butter,but with cherries) I like to eat it on toasted English muffins or mix it with cream cheese and serve it as a dip at parties with Graham crackers or biscoff cookies. Oh what bliss!!!!! My parents are planning a trip up there and they already know to bring me my cherry butter back.

I really don't have high hopes for my trees. I got 2 specifically for pollination, but I don't think they will bear fruit. However,I had to try. My sister has a small farm and if anyone would be able to grow them she would. Cherry-juice stained fingers crossed.

I used to have a Montmorency & Bing cherry trees......."used to" being the key here. Oh well! Yes! I like cherries! My one house has sweet plums, a really good producer, until the birds find them, my renters tell me. Apricots do well here in Colorado.

Fresh cherries are my favorite fruit. Whenever I see them for sale, I buy them to celecbrate my own personal "first day of summer." Five or six bucks a pound, who cares/

I have a tree with three kinds of cherry grafted. However, I've only ever tasted about three cherries total because the birds get them so quickly. The tree is just a huge bird feeder.

I love cherries, especially sour cherries! That is how I thought of my user name. In the late 1990's when I first got my Webtv and internet I typed up Alzheimer Care help into the search bar it brought me to the CareGiver Forum on Gardenweb. I needed a user name to join and I was sitting on the couch with a bowl of sour cherries on my lap and I was drinking a fizzy water as I thought of a name. I thought of Cherryfizz. Litttle did I know at the time there was also a drink called by that name and also someone else on some diary site had also used that name but she was definetly not me haha. I fill up on cherries during the growing season. There is a sour cherry orchard in the county where I go to pick cherries. I just have a top refrigerator freezer so there is not enough room to freeze very much so I just end up eating what I pick. I love dark cherries as well. Living close to Michigan I can cross the border and get Michigan sweet cherries too. I love cherry juice but it is way too expensive. Last time I looked at a bottle of tart cherry juice it was $25 for less than a litre of juice. I bought some cherries at Easter for $5 a pound and they were really good. Set a bowl of cherries in front of me and I am in Heaven.

Elmer, thanks for the answer about the taste of fresh cherries. I'll have to look around here, see if anyone offers them straight off the tree....

I love cherries. They tend to be expensive here and limited availability so when I find them I snatch them up. Also love the Rainiers. I once paid something like $12/lb for them and didn't regret it one bit.

Cherryfizz, if you can get to a Trader Joe’s, they have a 32oz bottle of 100% tart cherry juice for under $5(US). Love Ranier cherries too, but I was disappointed with the ones I bought last year. They were mealy.

Waiting for the Traverse City sweet cherries. Soooo good!

I am fortunate in that across the street is a lovely old sour cherry tree -- and the owner's family doesn't care for the fruit, so they let me pick all I can.

I've planted my own, though -- a North Star tree, and 3 bush cherries (Romeo, Juliet and Carmine Jewel). The bush cherries have set fruit for the first time this year -- I can't wait to taste them!

I would have to say that a fresh picked peach is my real favorite, though. Love getting them from the orchards up near Lake Erie.

I had never had a fresh apricot before I moved to San Diego - the house we rented had a tree in the yard. I thought those lovely, so sweet fruits were some kind of peach until I baked them into a pie and discovered that they were apricots!

raee, if those apricots were very flavorful, prone to bruising, and had a short shelf life, they may have been of the Blenheim variety. Absolutely the best apricot (in my view) but not grown commercially because of how fragile they are. In the Bay Area, those were the ones most frequently grown to be dried because of the flavor.

Thanks amylou - I just got back from the market and they had cherries. I wouldn't have looked if not for this post. $6.99 but they look beautiful. I consider these a splurge and so I deserve it. :) It did put me on a fruit hunt and I also bought strawberries and a watermelon. Happy days ahead!

Skibby I just bought 2 more pounds myself!!!! Mmmmm

Thanks Blubird for letting me know about the cherry juice at Trader Joes. After my election work is over my cousin and I are planning on going to either Grosse Pointe or Royal Oak to the Trader Joes in Michigan that is closest to us. For sure I will be stocking up on cherry juice for that price.

Aaaaaaaand they're gone again. Dang it. I knew I should have bought more...

We found cherries too, imported from Cali. I'll have some tomorrow!