Our little homestead now has 7 different Types of Sour Cherry Tree’s or Dward Sour Cherry Bushes. While they are all tough “sour” type they are not all “cherry pie cherries” some are sweet enough to eat fresh, some are better for canning and yes, I have two that are to be said to be the best for wine. I am looking forward to learning how to make a SWEET homemade Cherry wine for both a bit of sipping and for cooking with..
This is NOT my photo, my little Bushes are not this big yet, but it is a lovely example of this type of Cherry cross and I am personally thrilled that they are thicket cherries, they are pruned for sale on a single stem but if you bury them a little deep, they will start to push up sister/babies faster and while it does mean you need to do some pruning, it also means you if something happens to the main stem, you will not lose your plantings.
So what is the reason we are having a little post on cherries and with a focus on Juilet, who is hardy to ZONE 2, which lets face it is overkill on my Zone 5 farm.. but this spring has been very different, first we have boken records for having some of our warmest days currently on record for 60 to 80 plus years and we didn’t just get a warm day and then cold.. no we had a series of warmer then average days and then of course being april we have had frosts, cold, snow and pea sized hail..
I have watched post after post on my local big city garden group and its clear that the heat sink of the city has pushed the growth of their leaves and flower buds harder then here on the farm, we had a very nice snow pack and it took its time melting out, we had snow on the farm a good 8 to 10 days longer then the city appeared to.. so I think that helped as well.
Juilet Cherry Bush type was the first to hit bloom stage on the April 24th, I will be taking any and all cherries off the bushes this year to get them focus on roots and growth but I will report back if I have cherries to take off on this very early first to flower..
What is happening in your neck of the woods? Do you have Cherry Trees, Cherry Bushes, do you have the Sask Dwarf Hardy Cherries series of 4 or some of the 4? Are you seeing early warming, early flowering? or are you within a normal spring for your own area?
Just another Day on the Farm 
I have a Juliet and a Crimson Passion. My crimson passion is a couple of years younger than my juliet. They both form a thicket. Crimson passion is a later than juliet and the end of the juliet bloom overlaps with the beginning of the crimson passion bloom. Last year my Juliet was 8 years old and it was the first time the tree was super loaded. Unfortunately, it was the first time the f***ing squirels were a problem. I hardly had a cherry.
We are seeing very early flowering in the city. My apricot bloomed 3 weeks early and it looks like the cherries will be 2 weeks early. Kenko asian pear will be blooming early and grape buds are swelling early. Currants seem to be on schedule. We’ll see about the raspberries, blue berries and aronia.
Best of luck with your season.
On one hand thats very useful that you had lovely big harvest by year 8, that gives me hope that mine might be as fast in production but I am so sorry about the squirrels.. I have been worrying about them and the hazelnuts so I plants lots of cat nip out in that area as well and put a big high and dry bench that gets sun.. my hope is that the farm cats will and they do go up to get a little roll in, hang out on the sleeping bench and that by making sure its very much a area that they do the round in that it will help, I had not even thought about the fruit, normally I am more concerned with birds being a issue. Sound like your season could be a good one as well
We don’t have any fruit trees sadly, it’s one of the things I would plant if we had a house and bigger garden. I can see lots of cherry trees in bloom here though we have now had a few days of cold weather, and the weather service says it’s the coldest April we have had for quite a few years.
I am glad you can see cherry and other fruit in bloom around the area you live, that must be nice, I know I loved it when I lived in the city, we have a program in the big city closest to me called hidden harvest, it connects peaple with fruit trees in their yard that they do not pick with peaple who do not have fruit trees that would like the fruit.. they split it out, some to the home owner, some to the pickers and some to the local food bank.. its very popular, I wonder if you might have something like that locally? Stay warm..
Hidden Harvest is a great idea! I do not know if we do something like that as such here but I do know people offer their fruit on Freecycle to be picked. I have also seen that people on our Facebook page for our community encourage people to come pick fruit from their trees. I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled in the fall as there are a lot of fruit trees here…
That’s so wonderful they post to come pick.. I wish I lived close enough for something like free cycle but I am truly trying to only come off the farm once a month at most.. and we are in yet another full lockdown till the end of may.
Take care, and keep yourself and your husband safe.
We are doing our best in this second wave, we have 70 plus percent of all the tests coming back on the varient that came from the UK (sorry, that’s just how they say it here) so our numbers have really increased as its more catchable is what they say.. we are staying home on the farm.. we even had to get a print out to fill out to give us permission from the AG so we can drive for farm related needs.. I have never been stopped but I keep it with me in case i need it..
It’s ok I understand, it’s called the UK variant etc. for a reason, no offense taken.
Yes good idea to keep it printed out and with you, you never know when you might need it.
We have lots of cherry trees at our local country park just down the street. I take a note of any local wild trees blooming this time of year, and make sure to check on fruit later on. My son and I like to pick cherries in June/July–they’re all sour but still fun to eat, make faces, and spit out the stones. We pick apples, blackberries, raspberries and plums later in the summer. All wild, all within walking distance; we live in West Yorks. Maybe there’s a place like that near Silver too?
I’m lucky enough to have a garden big enough for dwarf fruit trees. One of my three cherry trees is actually a mini dwarf, and it and most of the other fruit trees are growing against a wall or fence. All are covered in blooms now too.
Hi Galadriel, How lovely, I do that too.. that’s one of the first things I do when I move to a new area is walk, drive and watch and mark where the wild fruit is blooming so I know where and when to come back and I check for little babies that can be dug out and brought back to the farm.. I make a deal with the momma tree or bush, I bring good compost and fill in the hole with compost , it means that a) the big plants are feed, there is no hole as I can come back to wild harvest for the next couple years will the babies grow up.. That’s wonderful they are in blood.. its such a pretty sight for sure.