North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Martha Davis <martha_davis@earthlink.net>]

Re Sweet cherry trees

When I tasted frozen samples of the U Saskatchewan dwarf cherries last
summer at the NAFEX meeting they were not so different from a really ripe
pie cherry.  Definitely not very close in perceived sweetness to a Bing.
The flavor is closer to a pie cherry as well. I liked them but think of
them more as a pie cherry substitute than a sweet cherry
substitute. Different varieties are more or less sweet, but not
dramatically so.  They are very dark when ripe it would be easy to pick
them too early. They were good dried, note that they felt the need to add
sugar to the dried product.  I think most people wouldn't do that with a
dried swet cherry.  When I saw them the fields were extremely muddy.  So
the plants can tolerate a lot of water,  I don't know about what the
weather is like when the fruit is ripening.

Martha Davis