It's a decent year for our sour cherry trees. We picked around 4 gallons today and will be picking for a couple of weeks more as the more shaded trees ripen. I have around 140, mostly volunteer cherry trees.





Are any of the rest of you picking cherries?

Keith

Give me your address and permission and I will pick some. The few people that I knew that had trees gradually had their trees die off.

We had a tree when I was a kid and dad had me sit near the tree and shoot the birds with a BB gun. How do you keep the birds from getting most of your cherries.

We lost all of our fruit trees over the years. I miss them. You sure have a fortunate situation. Let us see a good photo of the pie.

I am with Randy, we can come help lighten the load on those tree branches..

I didn’t click to see cherries, I wanted to see the pie!!!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^........This ^

I would be interested in a few seedling/sapling starts.

Mark in Central -SE OH

He lives in heaven

Here's the first fresh cherry pie of the season.



Diane just did a quick crust, because we are canning. We've got a full water bath going of quart jars of cherry pie filling.

Keith

Here's one of the pitters/stoners we use. They are about $100.00 new, but you can buy them for as little as $4.00 at auction. We have 3, a his, a hers and a backup. It used to take many hours for us to pit cherries, a few times longer than picking them. With these pitters we can pit a bucket of cherries in around 10 or 15 minutes. They mangle the cherries somewhat, but the cherries taste the same, with much less labor.




For a few years, I've been thinking of planting a more organized orchard of these sour trees and starting a You-pick. Once, I transplanted 24 of them in late Summer, watered them well and lost all but one, that was damaged, to where it lost the top 3/4ths of the tree.

For the next couple of weeks, I've got friends and relatives who will be coming over to pick cherries every few days.

Currently, the trees mostly grow along both sides of my spring/ditch line

Keith

I sent you a PM.

We have a lot of mulberry trees too. The birds prefer the taste of mulberries over the taste of cherries and they ripen at about the same time. Except for the year before last, when the mulberry crop failed and two years where the cherries ripened well before the mulberries, the birds have not been to hard on them.

The deer got most of my low hanging cherries last year. This year, I've been leaving sweaty shirts out and putting buckets on top off 55 gallon barrels to hopefully keep the deer away. The deer hit my best tree last week. I chased 3 nubby bucks off yesterday.

Keith

The first finished 6 quarts of pie filling. I would like to put up about 40 quarts, because we don't always get a decent crop.



Keith

OMG would that be nice to have some cherry trees. The pie looks delicious!!!!

I get to pick a lot of wild berries and freeze them to use all year long but not cherries.

Frozen cherries are good

You tell Diane she can get those pre fab crusts at the Walmart and do a good full wrap pie crust in no time. Gotta to have a full wrap crust on a pie like that. No more cheating.

My Bing cherries are a month away from being ready. Nankings are 2 weeks away
What I am seeing is some are having a red area on them and wonder if the seed weevil form my plums have infected them.

Those pitters look like the cats meow for getting the job done

Bob, Diane usually makes a full lattice work, pie crust, with lard, but was tired and busy. Six weeks ago, she had colon resectioning surgery and it's been a long recovery.

Keith

I remember you telling us of her surgery. My comment was in jest not criticizing her for a second. Make sure she understands that. I hope she continues to heal and make progress.

Thanks Bob.

Keith

Looking good Keith!

Thanks Doug.

Keith