North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[mIEKAL aND <qazingulaza@gmail.com>]

On Feb 24, 2010, at 3:52 PM, Douglas Woodard wrote:

> mIEKAL, have you had any indication that Nanking cherry plants from  
> some
> sources produce better seedlings than from others, especially from the
> point of view of size and usefulness of the fruit?


A lot of my early seedling stock was from Bear Creek, & the mother  
plants were all fairly uniform.  Over the last 15 years I've been  
growing out seed from the best fruiting & most vigorous trees.  As  
Ernest says, you get a little bit of everything.  & for me there is  
high percentage of mortality with nankings, I've had a lot of them die  
on me literally overnight.  They definitely don't like wet feet & my  
site is on heavy clay loam.

We had a planting on well-drained bottomland & they grew like weeds,  
full sized & fully fruiting in 3 years.



> I wonder if some nurseries sell plants of seedling lines that have  
> been
> selected for the fruit while others sell unselected plants. I seem to
> recall that in the past one or more nurseries on the Canadian Prairies
> claimed to sell seedling plants from selected lines though I've
> forgotten which.


I've never seen "improved strains" of Nanking,  & for zones 4-5  upper  
midwest where we don't have a lot of cherry options Nanking has always  
worked well.  & in particularly, for my purposes, they make really  
good wine, lot of character without imparting that fake cherry taste  
that a lot of commercial cherry juices have.  I've also used them in  
permaculture plantings where they make a good understory species as  
long as they get a half day sun or more.

Brian Smith from UW - River Falls has convinced me try Prunus Besseyi  
which he is having a lot of luck with.  I've located some generic  
nursery seed, I hoping some day to get some of his selected seeds.


~mIEKAL