Hi Tom,
I'm two provinces over, [Alberta] ...still experimenting with the odd sweet cherries. At around minus 32C you'll find bud kill, so now I'm trying to graft low and have branches tie low to the ground and hopefully get covered with snow in winter, I might cover some up. Are the Sollero sweet bud hardier?

Konrad,

Spring is on the way here this year -- a nice week. Don't know a lot yet about the Sollero cherries, but it appears they grow commonly in an area that does get cold winters. Average winter lows are about -10, which is comparable to what we get. Extremes show about -38. There are a lot of microclimates in Sweden, so it's hard to be specific.

What varieties of sweet cherry do you have the most hope for? Are you grafting onto pin cherry, prunus pennsylvanica?

OK..one needs to know exactly where these Sollero's are growing and with correct winter low temp. Average doesn't mean much, it only takes one night of minus 34C to kill flower buds, at minus 38 they would be toast for sure!

Some years ago a fellow grower was teaching us at the club about Alaskan growers using prunus Maackii root stock and growing sweet cherries! 10 years later still no sweet cherries in the Edmonton area reliably.

Guess we didn't get taught the rest of the story! [low temperature]

Right now I'm testing a couple of Russian cultivars...not sure what in my head,..let you know if anything is promising but I have very little hope.

In the meantime,...these wonderful Evans are still very nice!

Konrad, how do you get ahold of Russian cultivars? Do you go through the bureaucratic process of importation? Or do you simply have a friend mail them to you??? The exact place the Sollero cherries grow is called Siljansnas, Sweden -- it's on google maps, and you can find the USDA zones at plantmaps.com, which has a USDA map for Sweden.