North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Douglas Woodard <dwoodard@becon.org>]

Dan, what you have heard does not agree with what I have heard from a 
very well-informed person, which is that Evans does not come true from 
seed and that Evans seedlings are not even cold-hardy at Edmonton. See

<http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/NAFEX/message-archives/old/msg03690.html> 


What is the source of your information, and where are you?

Growing sour cherries on their own roots is apparently not that easy, 
and tissue culture is the favoured way. Evidently some nurseries prefer 
to graft, perhaps to have the whole process under their own control.

You may be interested in the articles linked at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evans_Cherry

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada


Dan Nave wrote:
> Why would one bother to graft Evans since it it is hearty on it's own 
> roots and supposedly grows true from seed?...
>
> Dan


> Douglas Woodard wrote:
> > Ernest, grafted trees from commercial sources would probably be grafted 
> > on Mazzard or Mahaleb. If I remember rightly you are in a particularly 
> > cold area of northern Minnesota. I would expect your temperatures to 
> > damage (in a warm winter unless with heavy snow cover) or kill either 
> > Mazzard or Mahaleb. Mahaleb is fussy about good drainage, likes a coarse 
> > subsoil. Any hardy rootstock readily available cheap to a comercial 
> > nursery is likely to suffer from compatibility problems. The only 
> > rootstock I can think of that *might* suit is Prunus X Dropmoreana, 
> > Frank Skinner's creation. Forty years ago East Malling did some work 
> > with it as a stock for sweet cherries, and from what I recall reading, 
> > some clones of it were compatible with sweets and some were not.
> >
> > If your sources were what I would consider fully competent and 
> > honourable, they would have told you what rootstock they were using - 
> > unless maybe they were afraid their competition would find out about it.
> > This kind of competitive pressure is one of the curses of the nursry 
> > business. It's extremely hard to know if your supplier is understandably 
> > secretive, or crooked or irresponsible.
> >
> > Doug Woodard
> > St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada
> >
> >
> > Ernest Plutko wrote:
> >   
> > > "Before" means before I buried grafts.  I was not doing a research
> > > study.  I was just trying to get trees to live through winters. I
> > > bought trees from several sources. Local and mail-order. It is
> > > possible burying graft is just protecting graft from winter cold. 
> > > This fall I will probe around buried trunks to see if roots have
> > > grown from Evans trunks.  I'll look up Evans own-root sources and let
> > > you know.
> > >
> > > ---- Original Message ----
> > > From: murphman108@msn.com
> > > To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
> > > Subject: RE: [NAFEX] Ernest's Evans cherries
> > > Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2010 03:14:46 +0000
> > >
> > >     
> > > > Hello Ernest;
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > I am interested in your Evans story. The trees that you buried the
> > > > graft union were better 'than before'. What does 'than before' mean?
> > > > Did you plant some at the same time from the same batch without
> > > > burying the graft? Same plant source? This is a decent finding on
> > > > your part. Please elaborate. Also, who is the 'own root' Evans cherry
> > > > tree source?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Murph