(OT) It's cherry season!

3 years ago

One of the great good things about living where I do is that cherries grow here. Sweet cherries, pie cherries, cultivated cherries and wild. We are the fortunate owners of a magnificent tree, a little past its prime, that in many years (not all: it depends on the weather) delivers splendid crops of the finest sweet cherries in the world. A few years ago we planted its replacement, now just beginning to bear, the fruit equally good. Wild cherries are ripe now, and their fruit is as sweet and flavorful as that of the cultivated varieties, just smaller. They're well worth eating. Then there are the abandoned cherries that we pass when we go on walks, still fruiting amid the brambles and wild clematis overtaking them, still good; and the abandoned orchard of pie cherries where every year we go to pick fruit for pies, making some now, and freezing some cherries for DD's birthday dinner in December. We got about five quarts, cooked down, on a recent trip. In order to continue to be able to pick pie cherries in that orchard, I've done a bit of brush clearing there, though nothing like what it needs, to prevent the cherries from being completely choked out. I've never seen any signs of activity there other than our own, so have a good conscience about the matter.

Figs are also getting ripe. I'm looking forward to them, as our trees are young and still just getting going, and last year during the drought we didn't get any figs at all. This year looks promising.

June is likewise apricot season, but those we'll have to buy in the store: they don't like our conditions, and who can blame them. Our little half-wild strawberries are also bearing now, and I sample bright little bursts of flavor as I work in the propagating beds.

Featured Answer

rosesmi5a

3 years ago

Yes, the three sweet cherries are on a Gisela semi-dwarfing rootstock; I don't remember what the Balaton is on -- it is a more dwarfing rootstock. Of the varieties, I think I like the Balaton the best because it seems to ripen over a few weeks which gives me more time to pick and process. The fruit is sweeter than a pie cherry, but not as sweet as a sweet cherry like the Bing. Beautifully colored fruit juice!

I remember seeing an area in East Lansing MI that had been a pie cherry orchard, but is now a subdivision. Those pie cherries were taller than the houses! Sitting underneath them when the fruit was ripe was like having a front row seat to a bird symphony.

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Comments (7)

portlandmysteryrose
3 years ago
How wonderful that you have both older and younger trees to harvest right there in your garden! Cherry season is one of my very favorite seasons. Our family is picnicing tomorrow, and cherries are on the menu. :)

My mother’s cherry dishes that I inherited. Good for later in the year when the real thing comes in a can. Carol
Melissa Northern Italy zone 8 thanked portlandmysteryrose
intwilight z6a KS
3 years ago
My family farm had a couple of cherry trees when I was small. They were a bit tart, but not tart enough to stop you from wanting to eat them off the tree. Made amazing pie and jam.
Melissa Northern Italy zone 8 thanked intwilight z6a KS
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Sheila z8a Rogue Valley OR
3 years ago
I love this, Melissa. I love your dishes Carol.
Melissa Northern Italy zone 8 thanked Sheila z8a Rogue Valley OR
Melissa Northern Italy zone 8
Original Author
3 years ago
Carol, I like your dishes, too. I love good china. Intwilight, aren't fruit trees great? It sounds like you had pie cherries, and they are wonderful; I'm glad you wrote in about them. Our pies are amazing, too. Sheila, thank you!
rosesmi5a
3 years ago
The birds love cherry season here :) -- I planted three sweet cherry trees and one Hungarian pie cherry, the Balaton cherry (see here). However, even though the trees are thoroughly netted the birds find a way to pick the trees bare. I don't really mind as I figure that is the birds' payment for being on bug patrol seven days a week, all day long during the growing season. They do an excellent job! Cherry trees are lovely too -- their early bloom is something I look forward to each year.
Melissa Northern Italy zone 8
Original Author
3 years ago
Nice post, rosesmi. I hope one day you get to enjoy some of your cherries in spite of the birds: perhaps when they're more mature and are simply producing greater quantities of fruit?

I don't know what our local pie cherry is, always the same variety, I suspect a Montmorency type, but who knows. It's always the same kind. I wrote a long letter this morning to my sister, in which I detailed my plans for growing every kind of fruit that is suitable to our soil and climate, and needs no particular care. Perhaps I should add Balaton cherry to my list of plants to look into.

For breakfast this morning I had cherry pie, made from some of the fruit we gathered several days ago, pitted, and froze until my daughter's return from university. However, the abandoned orchard we picked the cherries from is abandoned no longer: Friday as we passed by it I saw that someone has been cleaning it up. Good for the grove, and I hope the cleaners-up get plenty of fruit from it; not so good for us. We'll have to put more effort into growing our own pie cherries.

Are your sweet cherries on a dwarfing rootstock? I find it kind of hard to imagine netting a full-sized sweet cherry. I think the usual practice locally is to let sweet cherries reach the size nature designed them to be.