Not so long back I decided to bake my brother a cherry pie (his favorite) for his birthday. To my surprise I couldn't find canned cherries for pie filling that were not already adulterated with sugar, thickener, and food coloring.

So recently I decided to plant some sour cherries and purchased 10 Montmorency bare root sour cherries from a nursery in Wenatchee, Washington. There were also 'Balaton' sour cherries which is a Hungarian variety brought here in the 80's. It is sweeter than Montmorency and darker fleshed. #1 variety in Hungaria and surrounding countries. On the other hand Montmorency variety goes back at least 300 years from France where it still enjoys widespread popularity. It is the number one grown sour cherry worldwide.

Oregon used to produce a lot of sour cherries but I never see any orchards anymore. I also don't see sour cherries at our local farmers market, hence my decision to go with ten trees. LOL

As I was reading up on sour cherries I was kind of surprised to read how healthy they are for folks. Especially mentioned is the ability to help athletes maintain muscle tone and recover from muscle soreness after vigorous work outs.

I'm thinking I need the cherries for beaver season!

This country has pretty much become all Balatons. Not alot of Montmorencys left in the southern part of the state. Not sure what the break down is up farther north but my guess would be that its similar

Montmorency type sour cherry trees are the most common fruit tree on my farm. I have many hundreds of them. They spread well by roots and seed. I really like them. The trees have been on my farm since at least the fifties. As the old ones die off, new ones pop up.

I hope to make an organized orchard, for you pick, of them this Fall. My current trees mostly grow along the ditch line for my springs.

They are excellent for your health and pies.

Keith

Hard to beat a pie made with sour cherries. Never knew what variety we had but knew that they were good.

So those are all going into the processing market?

Keith, do your trees produce as well as grafted Montmorency? I'm assuming they're seedlings right?

Carl, they mostly come up from roots. When I first moved here, a friend of mine offered to bulldoze my over grown ditch line. I realized it was full of cherry trees, from the pits on the ground and the bark. Most of the trees grew flat on the ground for 15' or 20' before growing up. They were competing with honeysuckle, multiflora, Virginia Creeper, wild grape and other trees. I realized new cherry trees were popping up in my lawn and let them grow for 3 years, before moving them. 23 out of the 24 trees I moved, died. I didn't know enough to severely prune them and to wait until they were dormant.

The trees in my ditch line range from 20 plus' to just sprouted. I have a couple of hundred that are over 12'. They are crowded and intertwined.

I planted a few hundred sour cherry tree seeds last year. They've been coming up well from the seeds, but the cats keep digging in them, even though I blocked the beds with tomato cages. I would like to.plant at least 60 in an orchard pattern this fall.

I don't know if they produce as well as the grafted Montmorency trees. I was told that the cherry trees were here since at least the fifties. Apparently around a dozen old women used to come pick cherries, every few days, for a few weeks a year. in a good year, I get many times more cherries than I can pick. I have family and friends who come and pick lots of the cherries. The trees that are isolated get buckets of cherries on them.

I plan on grafting onto them too.









Keith

I dont have alot of knowledge about the northern part of the state which is considered the bigger "cherry growing area" but the southern part of the state does have a processing plant that takes a good number of the local cherries along with fruit and some vegetables. I grew up about 10 miles from it. I also know a number of growers that specialize in Balatons for the winery market and some truck into Chicago for "farm market" sales. Usually those guys are growing a wider variety of things that are more specialty for this area such as peaches, plums, pears, raspberries.

Just coming out of apple pollination here and berries are getting well underway depending on how far south in the state and how far off Lake Michigan they are located

Best cherry pies for my taste are made with Montmorency tart cherries.....this thread made me hungry. Keith, bowl of cherries look great. How often and with what do you spray them with..?

Man! Thanks for sharing those pics Keith! Everything looks great.

My sister recalls picking sour cherries for a local orchard and that the juice would be just streaming down her arms. She hated picking the sours compared to sweets.

These Montmorency cherries also make a very good wine, and the wine can be a dry,or sweet wine.I made 2 different batches this past Summer.

My grandmother had a big sour cherry tree in her backyard, always full of cherries. They widened the road and the house and tree was gone....

So how do the bush cherries, like Nanking , compare to regular tree type sour cherries?

I have never sprayed them. They appear to have no health or insect issues. Birds are only a problem in years where the mulberry crop fails. Deer will eat the cherries, but mostly leave the leaves and branches alone.

Keith

2 couples, who are friends of ours, make mead mellowmels with the cherries they pick here.

Keith

I just want to know where the country of Hungaria is.

Girl, someday you need to get out of Yalobusha county!

My ancestors came from Hungary, not Hungaria.

When your ancestors came here, they most likely said they were from Magyarország, not Hungary.

Keith

Ha! I didn't even realize I had given the Spanish name for Hungary. I speak more Spanish than I do English on a day to day basis. MY bad! LOL

If you like Monts for wine you really should try Balatons. The color is a deep burgundy and much closer to that of a sweet. With some honey thrown in it’s a pretty good wine but seems to take much longer in carboy from my experience