As a youngster, I never could get my fill of maraschino cherries. That is, until the day I got my hands on a whole jar of them, sat down with a spoon and proceeded to finish them off.
Home-grown cherries encompass more than just the flavor of Bing, one of the most common varieties of sweet cherry offered fresh in markets this time of year. Bing is one of the many Bigarreau-type sweet cherries that make good commercial fruits because of their firmness.
There’s another whole category of sweet cherries know as Heart (or Gean) cherries that are notable for their soft flesh and heart shape. Black Tartarian is a Heart cherry that would be good to try in the backyard.
MORE KINDS OF CHERRIES
Tart cherries are easier to grow than sweet cherries. Some varieties grow on smaller trees, so could be netted against birds. In contrast to most varieties of sweet cherry, tart cherries do not need cross-pollination. So an isolated tree will bear fruit. Tart cherries also are more cold-hardy than sweet cherries and somewhat more resistant to pests. Northstar is a good variety of tart cherry to grow.
There’s yet another kind of cherry, little known on this side of the Atlantic but quite popular across that big “pond” — a natural hybrid of sweet and tart cherries. Duke cherries, as these are called, exhibit intermediate characteristics between their parents in both fruit and tree.
WILD AND SEMI-WILD
We’re finished here with the cherries you might find in supermarkets, but not with cherries you could grow. Some are barely edible, such as wild black cherry, and chokecherry.
Western sand cherry is a relatively small bush whose fruit is not edible “straight up,” but reputedly makes great jam. I’ve never made jam from my sand cherries but thoroughly enjoy just looking at the shrub.
For the cherry that offers a little of everything, I recommend Nanking cherry. The fruit is tasty right off the bush and usually borne in such abundance that birds can’t make a dent in the crop. Those fruits are preceded by oodles of white flowers, and after the leaves have fallen, the shiny, peeling, copper-colored bark is pretty to look at.
Nanking cherry can take any amount of cold and heat, and demands no attention to pests or pruning.
