North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[rmelrose@bluemoo.net]

Well Dave, that is interesting for at least a couple of reasons. Your
figures seem to indicate that things often get worse as the year progresses
-- which is consistent with what I see here. My moderately damaged sweet
cherries are hanging on, but not rebounding. The mildly damaged trees seem
to have recovered almost completely. I take it that your sour cherries were
unfazed by the winter?

The fact that you are growing these sweet cherries in 4a is rather
reassuring to me, makes me feel a little less Don Quixotian. How far along
are they? Do you know what rootstocks they are on?

Richard

> 
> Message: 5
> Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 13:36:35 -0500
> From: "Griffin Gardens" <griffingardens@earthlink.net>
> Subject: RE: [NAFEX] Cherries -- Longish, questions and comments
> To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
> Message-ID: <4120037229183635510@earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> 
> Hi Richard,
>    For what it is worth, these are my survival/recovery stats on cherries
> for last year in central MN, zone 4a. I say for what its worth because we
> had an atypical open "prairie" winter with little snow and deep frost, lots
> of sun, wind, and low humidity. The low temp was only -17 F, and so damage
> seems to have been by desiccation, which is not generally the case here,
> rather than by our usual cold. Such damage is more erratic with the same
> cultivar having vastly different damage in different locations in the
> orchard. I have decided that I cannot make any valid conclusions about
> hardiness based on these results as this kind of winter is only a once in
> ten or fifteen year event here. 
>    I imagine that your winters are generally like our more typical ones and
> so these results would have little usefulness for you as well. Recovery
> rates may have some meaning though, and my assessment on June 6 gives a
> rating of good for vigorous re-growth to Kristin, Lapins, Sweet Sept.,
> Attika, Regina, and Schmidt(best).
> 
> Ratings are for dieback and are on a scale of 0 - 10, with 0 being dead and
> 10 indicating no dieback. Ratings in the first column were made on May 19.
> The second column(*), on June 6, when recovery assessment of new growth
> vigor was also noted.
> 
> SWEET CHERRIES
> 
> KRISTIN      9   *6  
> LAPINS       9   *8
>              7   *4
> ULSTER       7   *4
> GLACIER      4   *3
> RAINIER      4   *4
> VAN          4   *4       
> SKEENA       7   *4
> SCHMIDT      9   *7
> SUMMIT       0
> SWEET SEPT   9   *7
> HEDELFINGEN  8   *6
> CAVALIER     8   *6
> ATTIKA       2   *3
> REGINA       6   *4
> SAM          1   *0              
> HUDSON       8   *7
> BLACK GOLD   0
> 
> 
> TART CHERRIES - 10 all
> 
> DANUBE 
> EVANS     
> METEOR
> MESABI
> NORTH STAR
> 
> 
> 
> Dave Griffin
> Cold Spring, MN