Varieties of cherries for 7b

Smokymist

Smokymist

Well-known member
I am currently in East TN...that might, and probably will, change at some point this summer, but I know I'm not going colder.
My son wants to take me shopping for fruit trees for Mother's Day.....
Well , as most of you do , I already have a bunch. I dont have cherries though and I love cherries.

My memories of cherries are of mom and dad hAving an orchard of tart cherries, I would pick and eat and make my stomach hurt on the way to and from the schoolbus everyday.

These are the sweeter varieties a local nursery has..

Rainier
black tartarian
lapins ( self pollinating)

Anyone have any experience with these ? And any recommendation on a tart variety ?

Thanks !
Cheryl
 
zone is not super relevant for cherries, what i need to know to recommend is how many chill hours and how humid your summers and springs are.
 
This is just based on what i think of east tennesee: good chill hours (over 1k usually) and very wet springs and summers.

For that you will have a great deal of issue with cracking and brown rot. Brown rot, you can spray for relatively easily. Cracking you must pick very resistant varieties.

The most resistant varieties i have found are black gold, black york, white gold, kordia/attiika, and black tartarian is ok. These are mostly not self fertile. White gold and black gold are both selfertile.

Ranier and black tartarian are both ok, but not excellent. if youre limited to your list htye should be fine. Lapins is also ok but not excellent, though i have less experience there. I grow black tartarian for its flavor here in a very wet climate thats bad for cracking, but crracking is LESS of a big deal when you dont have that many fruit and are eating them quickly. I dont grow any white cherries because i just dont like them that much.

This is for sweet cherries, your best bet will actually be to grow tart cherries and just pick a sweeter one, theyre way more resistant to cracking.

For this i recommend Danube, Meteor, and Montmercy. these are all at least partially self fertile and will be WAY less annoying.

You can also look at the bush cherries, like juliet.
 
My wife got a North Star Cherry grafted on an unk cherry rootstock about 10 years ago. The harvest is plentiful and what is left over goes to the birds. It is more sour than other varieties.
 
Smokymist said:
I am currently in East TN...that might, and probably will, change at some point this summer, but I know I'm not going colder.
My son wants to take me shopping for fruit trees for Mother's Day.....
Well , as most of you do , I already have a bunch. I dont have cherries though and I love cherries.

My memories of cherries are of mom and dad hAving an orchard of tart cherries, I would pick and eat and make my stomach hurt on the way to and from the schoolbus everyday.

These are the sweeter varieties a local nursery has..

Rainier
black tartarian
lapins ( self pollinating)

Anyone have any experience with these ? And any recommendation on a tart variety ?

Thanks !
Cheryl
Click to expand...
Try the North Star. It is quite tart.
 
snarfing said:
This is just based on what i think of east tennesee: good chill hours (over 1k usually) and very wet springs and summers.

For that you will have a great deal of issue with cracking and brown rot. Brown rot, you can spray for relatively easily. Cracking you must pick very resistant varieties.

The most resistant varieties i have found are black gold, black york, white gold, kordia/attiika, and black tartarian is ok. These are mostly not self fertile. White gold and black gold are both selfertile.

Ranier and black tartarian are both ok, but not excellent. if youre limited to your list htye should be fine. Lapins is also ok but not excellent, though i have less experience there. I grow black tartarian for its flavor here in a very wet climate thats bad for cracking, but crracking is LESS of a big deal when you dont have that many fruit and are eating them quickly. I dont grow any white cherries because i just dont like them that much.

This is for sweet cherries, your best bet will actually be to grow tart cherries and just pick a sweeter one, theyre way more resistant to cracking.

For this i recommend Danube, Meteor, and Montmercy. these are all at least partially self fertile and will be WAY less annoying.

You can also look at the bush cherries, like juliet.
Click to expand...
We are actually in a terrible drought right now, and it's been this way for a few years. I would love to grow tart cherries, best for canning and pie making. Thank you !!!
 
I tried to grow Bing and Stella, 2 sweet cherries that are good pollinators, however...in 3 years they never bloomed at the same time.
A bunch of people told me not to waste anymore time on them.

I picked up a Montmorency sour cherry, self fertile as most or all sour cherries are.
 
ktrain said:
I tried to grow Bing and Stella, 2 sweet cherries that are good pollinators, however...in 3 years they never bloomed at the same time.
A bunch of people told me not to waste anymore time on them.

I picked up a Montmorency sour cherry, self fertile as most or all sour cherries are.
Click to expand...
How do you like that ? I'd rather have a sour cherry
 
I'm in the same growing zone and also experiencing a drought for years. I planted mine in May 2024 so I can't say much about the flavor. The birds tell me these are best cheries they had 😠so I guess it's worth it and I won't be putting out a bird feeder. My sour cherry fruited for the 1st time in June 2025 and the sweet cherry is growing the slowest out of them.

These are the ones I grow
Benton® Dwarf Sweet Cherry

Montmorency Dwarf Pie Cherry (sour)
 
My wife gets tired harvesting the cherries because she has to pit them for preservation and cooking. The birds help with the harvest plus we let our neighbors know to come by and pick as much as they want.
 
ktrain said:
I tried to grow Bing and Stella, 2 sweet cherries that are good pollinators, however...in 3 years they never bloomed at the same time.
A bunch of people told me not to waste anymore time on them.

I picked up a Montmorency sour cherry, self fertile as most or all sour cherries are.
Click to expand...
I have a Stella and it is self-fertile, but it only gave me a few cherries. I grafted Black Tartarian (this year) and Royal Ann (last year) to it. But these two haven't fruit yet.
 
mech_pa said:
I have a Stella and it is self-fertile, but it only gave me a few cherries. I grafted Black Tartarian (this year) and Royal Ann (last year) to it. But these two haven't fruit yet.
Click to expand...
Interesting, I was under the impression that sweet Cherries were not self fertile.
That is why I went with Stella and Bing, good pollinators for each other.
But hey...bonus. lol
 
Generally a firm crispy texture means it will be more prone to cracking.
For cooking, pie cherries retain far more flavor than sweet cherries.
Sweet cherry trees on their own roots are huge, like 40 feet high, so anyone without a "cherry picker" lift truck has them grafted them onto dwarf or semi-dwarf root stocks.
Pie and sweet are different species but they are generally graft compatible and may cross pollinate where bloom overlaps, with the caution that the pie branch will be thinner and more twiggy (still vigorous but more in a bushy highly branching habit.), so for multi-grafted trees pie on sweet works better than sweet on pie and you may see a noticeable step down in diameter at the graft after a few years.

Drought is not much of a problem, I mean there is drought and then there is drought. I grow some cherries without any irrigation after the third year, and in a normal year we get no rain of substance from the end of June to labor day (and only a couple inches in early June), very low humidity and 80f-100f most of July Aug. Although the winters fully recharge the soil to field capacity. (and soil depth matters). Commercially sweet cherries are grown with some irrigation in an even dryer hotter climate of east-central WA.
 
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