Variety of Cherry

[tjyuk]

Can anyone recommend a variety of Cherry good for eating please. I already have a well established Merton Glory variety but find it is no good for eating.

Any help would be very much appreciated.
Thank you

[littleexperience]

hi there i have a sunburst variety which are large, nice and sweet and self fertile the problem is the birds also like the taste so i have to net my tree every year but this year dew to the late frosts we had when it was flowering the at the start of may i have not got a huge crop but this year was a one of.but for taste and reliability i would recommend sunburst

[valmarg]

I think the first self-fertile sweet cherry tree was Stella, which we have. It is very good, sweet black fruits. I think there are more modern varieties, Cherokee comes to mind. Whereas Stella is prone to splitting, some of the later varieties are not.

As with littleexperience we had a frost whilst the bush was in full flower. As a result we are going to have no fruit this year. What little bit set the blackbirds have been taking whilst still virtually green. Netting is an essential. and it has to be quite a bit away from the bush. If it's too close the blackbirds just use it as a perch to peck through.

We've had good years, and bad years in the 20+/- years we have had the tree. This year is certainly the worst.

valmarg

[tjyuk]

Many thanks for your reply.

I did have a bumper crop this year but the pigeons did strip the tree in a matter of days, but I did not mind as am looking at getting another that I will net.

kind regards

[BarleySugar]

My fan trained cherry is Sunburst too. I have just finished picking the fruit, they are lovely, although some are a little small, so I'm going to make some jam from those. The biggest juiciest ones we ate fresh. It is only 4 years old, and I think I got about 12lb off it, so very pleased. There were 6 in some of the bunches too.
Last year we only got about 6, the wasps and caterpillars got to them first, but this year, after the hard winter and a winter wash consisting or organic oils to dissolve the insect eggs we were much more successful.