North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Dean Kreutzer" <deankreutzer@hotmail.com>]

Hello all,

I just want to add my thoughts to the cherries the U of S released.  While I 
think they are a great improvement in terms of quality and hardiness 
compared to the standard Montmorency and Evans cherry, I want to caution 
that they have not been thoroughly tested outside of the location of 
Saskatchewan.  We have a very dry climate, and the one thought I have is 
about how they will handle the humidity and disease that are nonexistant 
here.  They haven't shown any problems even in relatively wet years here but 
I just wanted to mention it.

Also, winters here are cold, and stay that way (usually, except this year) I 
have no idea how they will react to Jan-March warmups that occur more 
frequently in the northern US than here.  Will they come out of dormancy?  
How will they go into dormancy when temps in October are still in the 70's, 
where up here they are in the 40's.

It will be an interesting test for them and I look forward to hearing how 
they fare down south.  I think it would be kind of risky for anyone to go 
gung ho without testing them for a few years; people thought I was a fool 
for planting thousands of trees because of the lack of testing in my area!  
Of course, you can ignore my advice like I ignored others....

For people who are interested, the background of the new U of S cherries, 
they are a complex hybrid of mongolian cherry x sour cherry of about 60 
years of crossing, then crossed with the superior quality of the eastern 
european sour cherries such as erdi jubelium, erdi botermo, and cancasky 
rubin.  SK Carmine Jewel is came from a U of S hybrid x Northstar.  Crimson 
passion and most of the other 4 were crossed with cancasky rubin.  The ones 
crossed with the erdi series are still in testing, but I can tell you that I 
am more excited about those than the 5 new releases.

Quality of these new ones will not be better then Balaton so if you can grow 
it, I would only get a few to compare.

Take care & good luck
Dean Kreutzer
Regina, Saskatchewan Canada
USDA zone 3
www.overthehillorchards.ca