North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Kieran &/or Donna" <holycow@frontiernet.net>]

Morellos are more sour than amarelles, probably more phytonutrients too, if you don't mind something that's almost too sour to eat.  If you don't have really well drained soil, go to the extra trouble to either buy a tree on something other than Mahaleb, or bud or graft it yourself on sour cherry stock.  I used to pass a big nursery every week, on well drained soil, and a house that seemed associated with the nursery had a really nice sour cherry, probably Montmorency, that I just had to stop and look at one year.  The cherries were twice as big as the ones I'd been picking from a friend's local tree, I was so envious.  Then the next year the tree died.  My trees are own root, sprouts from my elderly friends trees, and though they sucker a little bit and the fruit are small, the tree is not dead.  Not dead is a very important quality in fruit trees.  Actually, what I'm wanting to do now is to graft or bud a bit of Montmorency onto a sprout and get the best of both worlds.  The problem is that the commercial nurserymen prefer to graft both sweet and sour cherries onto Mahaleb, and Mahaleb is a very shortlived tree on soils that are not superbly well drained.  In fact, it's prone to just dying from what I've read, even in commerical cherry soils. 

    I have the same situation with sweet cherries, I planted sprouts from local trees that make small fruit and grow just fine on heavy clay soil.  I'm thinking that if I wanted a good sweet cherry, I'd graft or bud onto one of the many young sprouts coming up as far as 15-20 feet from these trees.  Of course, I didn't get into this just to feed the birds, but I hear you can actually whack them and keep the trees small enough to net?   Donna