We have a cherry tree in our backyard. Last spring/summer, it did a whole lot of nothing. My parents had a cherry tree in their back yard when I was growing up, and it also never produced fruit, allegedly because it was the only cherry tree around an you need a second one for pollinating. I figured ours had the same problem and it would just stand there and look pretty.
Needless to say, we were a little surprised when we saw little green cherries sprouting out all over it several weeks ago. I still wasn’t convinced that they would ripen. I thought maybe they’d be like the cucumbers we tried to grow last year, which shriveled up after not being pollinated. But the cherries actually ripened!
We picked a bunch yesterday and ate them for dessert. We think they are probably Royal Anne cherries, because they still have some yellow on the outside, even though they are ripe, and the flesh on the inside is also still yellow. Rainier has a similar look as well.
Steve tells me that Royal Anne are the variety most often used to make maraschino cherries (confirmed by Wikipedia). Further research confirms that sweet cherries do need a second pollinator tree, while sour cherries do not. This should also be a pretty easy tree to maintain, as sweet cherry trees only require pruning to remove diseased or injured branches. Score!
© 2010 The Beehive All Rights Reserved