For the first time in over 15 years since I planted all my fruit trees, I have a tree full of bright, beautiful, luscious red Bing cherries! And they are delicious!
I harvested a whopping 11.9 oz.! At current prices, that comes to about $2.25 worth of cherries!
What a deal, figuring the price of the tree and 15 years of water.
But wait! I’ve got an apple tree with about 4 walnut sized apples and a pear tree with over a dozen tiny hard pears!
Congratulations! I can share your excitement in small way. I’m in year three with my first “stick in a bag” blackberry bush. It flowered and the fruit is developing. The plant is maybe a month or so from actual blackberries.
Unfortunately, blackberry sticks in a bag nos. 2 and 3 never rooted. I finally broke down and bought a real blackberry plant this year from a nursery but that plant probably won’t fruit for another year or two. That means my total investment of approximately $65 for three sticks, one plant, soil, and fertilizer will net me roughly twelve organic blackberries if the rabbits don’t get to them first.
I’m glad they are delicious. They better be! 
Does “all my fruit trees” mean 3 trees?
Bing Cherries are, by far, the best fruit ever invented. There is a small farm not far from my house that sells them, but they charge $9 for 1.5 lbs. That’s $6/lb. You’re even luckier than you think!!
Meanwhile, back the Mace homestead, my beautiful Santa Rosa Plumb tree is being brutalized by squirrels (and probably rats, at night). Last year there were only 3 plumbs left by the time I could pick them. This year isn’t looking much better. I still need a good week or two before I can pick them, and every day I see a dozen or so lying on the ground with one or two bites taken out of them. Those little critters are testing the fruit and destroying it without even eating it!!
Over the years, I’ve probably planted a couple dozen. I think I’ve only got six that survived, 3 of which have fruit this year. I pollinated them by hand this year, and that, in combination with favorable weather, made all the difference.
Assholes! One year I did strawberries, and the rabbits did the exact same thing! Every single berry had ONE bite taken out of it, ruining them all! I didn’t get to eat a single one!
I shoot those bastards on sight now.
I’ve got a backyard plum tree grove thing. It’s like a bunch of spindly 1" trees all growing together. I don’t take care of it at all and it produces 10 gallons of plums a year. The plums aren’t really big or sweet but they make good plum butter and sauce. I’m always amazed that the squirrels don’t really go after them.
Is it a plumb plum tree?
My puny cherry trees are probably several years from making any fruit, and several years past that before there are any the birds will let me have.
However if things continue on my other trees sometime in August I should be able to enjoy peach and cream.
Actually, it is pretty plumb. And I just got home about 5 minutes ago, walked across my back yard and saw a goddam rat running into the bushes. Goddam fucking RAT!!!
I hope all you gardeners with cherry trees have bumper crops. Retail prices this year have been very high, 5, 6 and 7 dollars a pound. Are they having weather problems in Washington state? Has the California drought reduced availability THAT much? I like most fruits, but cherries are va particular favorite. Have any of you growers tried netting a tree to keep the birds and the 4-footed varmints away?
If you were having issues with birds eating your fruit I would suggest planting a mulberry tree. The birds prefer the berries to cherries and will mostly leave a cherry tree alone if there is a mulberry nearby.
If you are having issues with squirrels and rats, it’s time for some barn cats or a terrier.
Just got back from the store (saw the prices) and have recalculated my Cherry Bonanza!
I have $3.75 worth of cherries! After 15 years. :rolleyes:
Clearly, you have realized the path to riches is stops, carries the 1, adds, mutters NOT in cherries, for you anyway. Sounds like a bunch of folks would like to borrow your dogs though.
Cherry tree here for the hand reach. 40yo. For the last 15 years it yields varied, but was generally low. This year it wont nuts: 100 kg. Every neighbor had his share.
Mulberries I got covered, the damn things are covered in berries every square inch on branch, stupid worthless tasteless sidewalk-staining berries.
I live in Vancouver where the only thing than grows more prolific than blackberries are discarded Ikea side tables. Last year was our first summer in this house and I chopped down blackberry bushes and dug up a bunch of roots to try to reclaim a garden. I even put an old discarded jute rug down and tried to create a layered garden. Old roots and weeds came up …there was no stopping mother nature. It’s rental property so the amount of investment in soil, equipment etc was not going to be worth it.
This year the blackberry bushes have outdone themselves with fruit. I’m a week away from the first crop and it will continue for months.
Yes. Blackberries in the Northwest are insane. Although I do have a hankering to plant some of those thornless ones I hear tell of. Thornless! What will they think of next. Otherwise I leave them growing along my back fence and let the kids pick them for fun. Crazy kids.
I have a cherry tree. I bought a female thinking there were enough males close by that I’d be OK, but never got even 1 cherry. I think the pawned a male off on me!!
Hooray for fruit at last!!
I planted a half dozen sticks in the ground that were supposedly blueberry bushes. Turns out they actually were! Three years of nothing. Then we got a handful of berries last year, half of which the birds promptly ate. But for the first time since we planted them 5 years ago LOTS of berries appeared this spring. I’m going to cover them with a net this weekend and if all goes well we should be getting at least a couple of quarts to harvest come July.