Sour Cherry Crop - 2020

We have a nice large side yard.  It seems like a real waste to use it for nothing but growing a lawn.  With that in mind I've decided to try to grow some fruit trees.  This year I'll be trying to grow Sour Cherries which is a fruit I use quite a bit in my Flanders Red and Sour Blonde Beers.

For the last few years I've picked sour cherries from a local orchard.  I've been getting something on the order of 40-50 lbs each year.  These are still pretty expensive per lb even though you do all the picking yourself (1-2 dollars per lb maybe).  I look forward to not having to pay that every year.

There are many types of sour cherry.  The pick your own orchard has the Montmorency type which has a light flesh and a flavor quite different than a sweet cherry (this is a Amarelle variety of sour cherry).  The traditional Belgian Lambic Sour Cherry is a Dark Red fleshed fruit called Schaerbeek - these are of a variety called Morello and have more of a traditional cherry flavor.  You can't really find Schaerbeek cherries here in the US so I have opted to plant a different species of the Morello variety:  North Star Cherries.

I bought 4 bare root plants that are about 3 feet tall now.  I should get fruit from them in 3 years.  North Start is a dwarf variety that will top out at 8-10 feet tall and wide.  I'm planting them about 11 feet apart in a nice sunny spot

I will post updated stats every month for this first year:

10/31/20

9/18/20

8/9/20

7/5/20

6/6/20

5/23/20

5/9/20

3/21/20

Growing Log:

• 3/20/20 - Planting Day
• The plants arrived the day before with root surrounded by wet paper.  They already had emerging green branch nubs starting to come out which was good sign of life

• Soaked the bare root plants in water for about an hr

• Dug holes about 18 inches wide and 2 feet deep for the plants

• Added compost to the bottom from my large compost pile and more compost in with the dirt

• Filled in the hole with the plants in a vertical position.  Needed to take care when filling in the hole to ensure that the graft point was above ground level as the roots are what ensures this is a dwarf variety

• Made a ring of dirt around the plant to help gather water
• Was scheduled to rain overnight so I didn't water.  Rain didn't arrive so I watered the next day
• 4/4/20 - Leaves Starting to emerge (all 4 plants are doing this)

• 4/11/20 - More growth in the last week:

• 04/26/20 - The plant have put out quite a few flowers - maybe 20 or so across the 4 trees.  Will be really neat to get a small sample of what the fruit are like in this first year

• 5/9/20 - Flowers have mostly dropped their peddles.  The trees are starting to form new branches

• 5/16/20 - Fruit is starting to form on a few of the trees

• 5/6/20 - Trees are putting branches out further and further.  3 Cherries are forming - getting bigger and starting to get a bit red

• 6/20/20 - The two fruit have gotten pretty red.  I came out this morning (which was pretty humid) and found that both had split.  I picked and ate them.  They were fairly light fleshed and pretty tart.  I wonder if they would have gotten a bit more red with additional ripening time.  I've had some missing leaves in the last week - some branches completely stripped.  I suspect deer as the plant closest to the edge of the property is the worst.

• 7/5/20 - The plants are doing well for the most part.  Branches are getting longer and thicker.  The tree closest to the road got damaged a bit more by deer.  I found a deer replant spray at home depot that has been successful at keeping them away for the last couple weeks - it smells a lot like road kill.  The plant has had a chance to recover as a result.  I've dosed all the trees with blood meal and bone meal to help promote growth.

Putting out some new leaves on branches picked clean by the deer

• 4/29/21 - Read about the 2021 crop here
• 4/30/22 - Read about the 2022 growing season here