Tasteless 'watery' cherries - Can I blame the rain?

[dan1979]

I have been feeding them sporadically, I've eaten a few that are ripe, they're a bit watery tasting and lack the concentrated flavour you expect from cherries.

What went wrong, is the wet summer to blame?

[Hazel at the Hill]

Hang on, I'll just go and ask the blackbirds.......... They didn't leave me one this year!

Before they did scoff the lot tho', I did notice that most of the cherries had split - presumably because of all the rain?

[Nicos]

I have one black cherry tree and the ripest ones had all split.
Apparently they have started turning black much later than usual this year and not as tasty as they should be.
As it's our first year as owners of the tree we thought they were yummy but as there were so many, I ended up stoning and cooking and then freezing a pile of them.
The flavour certainly intensified after cooking. Could this be your answer to rescuing their flavour??
At the prices M&S charge for cherries, I'm more than chuffed with my little hoard!! Good to think next year they will be even more tasty!!

[valmarg]

We have a Stella cherry tree which is quite prone to splitting.

Stella was the first (I think) self fertile sweet cherry variety. There have been quite a few more introductions since. Cherokee is one that is said to be less prone to splitting. There may be others.

I would have to say that in the 20+ years we have had the tree, the fruit is more likely to split when we have a period of heavy rain during ripening.

valmarg

[Two_Sheds]

My strawbs were fairly tasteless too, I put it down to no sun

[mellonmellow]

I have two cherry trees in our garden and they were all so tasteless that I had to throw them all out. I'm sure the nearby animals had a feast with them!

[dan1979]

Oh good, I can hope they're better next year then. They took an age to ripen and I was really looking forward to them

There was some flavour there, it was just masked by the wateriness.