Fruit-

I've got a nice sized Stella in a whiskey barrel (half)... My cherries in there are sizing up very nicely. I'll have to let them hang longer like you did. Problem here is every bug in town LOVES sweet cherries. Last year was a total disaster. I think I ate a couple out of 4 trees.

I've got Lapins too. Do yours vet very deep red? Those look lighter, but I don't have Rainier.

frank:

My Lapins is more black than red. It's a really nice looking cherry. It might be more red in a shadier condition. I won't say Lapins is the best cherry but it is very very good at 24 brix.

Do you have any shade cloth or something else you could cover your trees with? A screened in high tunnel would make your cherries pretty much like mine and solve most production problems.

I ate a few cherries of about 8 varieties tonight. There isn't a bad one in the lot. Usually when I test varieties there are about half stinkers. I think my cherry report is going to be all about winners. The biggest difference is firmness.

I see lots of potted cherries in my future!!

They sure look tasty. Here is half my harvest this year. (Royal Rainier)

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haha I was happy to see any at all since I just planted them bare root lat year.

Most cherries here have already (still a month before harvest date) been destroyed by relentless rain. I manage a couple of trees on top of a hill with plenty wind that are OK but rot on trees at other sites went from the fruit to the leaves and is very damaging to some trees.

It's interesting to know how sweet cherries can become if you aren't rushing harvest to beat rot.

home grower:

My limited experience with Royal Rainier says you have made a very good choice. I budded from my original tree to about 6 rootstocks this spring.

For second leaf any fruit is good. I have a couple second leaf trees this year with about 4-12 cherries. In third leaf on the precocious rootstocks, a couple lbs or more. By the fourth leaf heavy pruning to limit the crop or fruit thinning will be necessary on some scion/rootstock combinations.

harvestman:

It is interesting to know that store bought sweet cherries are maybe as much as a couple weeks from peak eating quality. But I have sympathy for commercial cherry growers. They are one hot spell or rain from disaster. I couldn't hack their job, too much stress. And some quality factors do diminish as harvest is delayed, such as firmness.

Some day you'll put in a screened high tunnel and grow better fruit with much less disease, insects, birds, etc. Potted cherries and a high tunnel would solve nearly all your rain related issues. As this little study has shown just being able to let the fruit properly ripen without fear of birds or rain can significantly improve quality.

I think the high tunnel really is a good idea for cherries, at least around here where they are so fickle. This year I am getting rotted fruits and bacterial canker plus the curculio was very active on them. So far I've eaten two White Golds, thats it. I always wonder why I keep them since plums are so much more reliable.

Scott

FN, yeah, someday- but the outdoors keep me insanely busy. I'm tied to a running wheel of projects based on various issues. I must make my living by working outside, for one. I must get most of my vegetables and fruit from my own plants. I must make sure that over 100 different orchards enjoy enough success to keep asking me back which in itself requires an excessive, almost psychotic level of attentiveness.

If I ever have either the luxury of retirement or a bit more recreation time (besides what I spend on this forum) I will certainly consider trying to grow the best fruits humankind has ever had the pleasure of eating- but for now that seems to be your exclusive domain.

Do you know of a single sole in this country doing what you're doing? I don't mean growing under shelters, because there are several ongoing university projects I've heard of doing that. I mean trying to produce the highest brix fruit possible and succeeding spetacularly.

Hats off to Fruitnut!

Here's a picture of a potted 3rd leaf Van on Giesla 5. It has a counted 130 cherries. Since the fruit is only medium size, figure 9g per fruit. 130 x 9 = 1.17 kg or 2.6 lbs of fruit. That was all hand pollination only. But there is as much fruit as I'd want compared to leaf area. With an open canopy, good light, and moderate crop load, the tree is primed for quality fruit.

And the tree was dug up from my abandon outside orchard this past winter and put into a 15 gallon pot. Van is very precocious and is highly rated in DWN taste tests. The few fruit I've tried are winners.

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This orchard in North Georgia http://www.mercier-orchards.com/pages/ContactUs.aspx from 10-4 weekends the next three weeks has pick your own sweet cherries from their orchard with about 12 varieties and about 100 cherry trees total. Trust me, any fruit person will be impressed if you visit this orchard whether for cherries, blueberries, apples, etc...

From what i have learned on this forum i tried to pick the cherries which were near leaves/branches getting full sun, darker the riper for the "bing" type sweet cherries, etc. but since they really don't use pesticides you can mouth sample in the field to taste for sweetness (brix?). But fruitnut, when looking at a cluster of cherries some will be dark red (peak brix and ripe?) and others slightly lighter red (not quite peak brix?) and thus are your experiments showing that ripe cherries today won't have as high a brix as ripe cherries in say a few weeks when the tree hit peak brix? I sampled from the sunned, shaded and partial sun sections of the same sweet cherry trees and found if all were dark black they were all deliciously sweet and equal in my opinion. I will return in a couple weeks to pick again to see if they seem any sweeter. Does it matter what time of day you pick the sweet cherries or just as long as they are sweet and not going too soft that is as good as it gets?

They had hormone traps to catch bugs instead of using sprays and apparently there aren't enough bird, deer, squirrels, etc. in the area to eat enough cherries to hurt overall production! The cherry trees were pruned to be no more than 8 feet tall , they had irrigation available and didn't seem to have any special mulch under the trees (grass in between rows and bare ground under the trees since nothing will grow in the shade).

PS- the cherries off the tree were better than anything i have ever purchased at the local grocery store. Fruitnut, have you ever tested grocery store cherry brix?

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garedneck:

Those are very very nice looking cherries especially outdoors in a humid climate. The picture shows an open canopy that will favor high quality. Color on some cherries is a very good indicator of ripeness and brix. Many trees in the PNW are big and very dense. Some of the cherries see little to no direct sun.

At some point the fruit will begin to lose firmness and flavor. I'll find out on mine in a week or two.

I've run brix on some grocery store fruit and it was bad. I have had some good cherries from the store but usually they are poorly colored and not very sweet like maybe 12-16 brix. If they taste good then they are good.

I decided tonight that I probably need to pick the Rainiers and a few others tomorrow. So one last brix reading and I'll have a variety report sooner than I thought, maybe a couple of weeks.

Thanks for all the interest and support!

Cherries here this year won't be ripe until the end of June, and that probably means the Japanese beetles will be into them.

Gared, I suspect traps were to monitor pests and time pesticide applications. Cherries in Georgia without spray seems quite unlikely- even more unlikely than that Fruitnuts system would work there. The kinks of growing under tunnels in the humid regions haven't quite been worked out as I understand it. 1% average humidity (lately), did you say Fruitnut?

Ya 1% humidity by day and maybe 5% at night. Outdoor trees have been hard to keep happy. Many have a limited canopy of leaves. I'm about to give up on apples anyhow. A couple trees hardly have any leaves from lack of chilling. Those that leafed out have about half the leaves they should.

But it does make good conditions for greenhouse fruit. And to answer your earlier question, I don't know anyone else pushing as hard for ultimate quality as I'm doing. A few people here that have seen my operation are talking of trying. But they either lack cash or experience.

Great postings on your indoor fruit growing project FN!
Not only you need cash and experience, something like this
is a major hobby and takes most of your spare time, energy,
endurance and thrive. A tree sitting in our yard and hoping for
fruits is just allot easier....or buying grocery store cherries...can't
wait for our BC cherries come in.

If they're growing apples in tropical Africa they can sure do it in the high texas brush country, I'd think. Have you ever tried leaf stripping to force dormancy?

No leaf stripping. I'm sure they'll come around but when it's running 90s every day and no leaves, well they are very unhappy. I'm going to pot up about three apples and chill them in the greenhouse. That's about all the apples I want to fool with unless the eating quality improves vastly over what I'm getting now.

Some country, you have to pot up apples and put them in a greenhouse to get chilling. Go figure...

Here is my Stella that is going on its 3rd year in the container. I have no idea what rootstock its on. Its pushing it for size, but it still fits in the garage.

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