Why Small Carmine Jewel Bush Cherry Trees are so Beneficial Video

Felix, Gurney's horticulture expert shows off a Carmine Jewel bush cherry tree and reveals what makes it one of the most loved and productive cherry varieties of the day.

Hi everyone, Felix here at Gurney's. You got me here at the top of our tart cherry tree, I'm at the top of an eight-foot ladder to pick some of the fruit here on our tart cherries and I'm doing this, trying to get all the fruit I can, but also I want to point out the difference between harvesting your cherries, caring for your cherries paired with some of the new bush cherries that we have coming down, one of them being Carmine Jewel and we'll show that to you here in a little bit. Alright folks, so here we are at our Carmine Jewel bush cherry. This happens to be a three-year-old Carmine. We planted it in fall 2007, right now we're in the summer of 2010 in zone 5, and this is it's first fruiting year and it has a nice crop on it. I mean nothing like it's going to be, but it's a really nice crop and the benefits are that you don't have to get up on a ladder to pick the fruit when it matures in your 5-year 6. It's mature size, it's only six to seven feet tall. So you can pick all the fruit from ground line. Some of the higher branches will be right up about here and you can pull those down, but it's all from the ground. Picking is really easy and netting this tree is the same thing which you'll see in another video of ours. That is just a piece of cake compared to the big tart cherry tree, size and netting the trees to keep the birds off and just all over care spraying picking everything. The other benefit of this carmine jewel is that it's on its own roots, it's not grafted or butted, like the other cherry varieties that are on the market, the tree types. This is on its own roots. So if you have a really really hard winter or something so you mow over your tree by accident or deer, get at it. The new shoots coming out of the ground are the same variety, so it's really, really adorable and Hardy as a result and beyond that you're not going to have winter kill with carmine jewel, because it was bred up in zone 4 in Canada and they have really Hard winters there minus 45 degree winters - and this is a very Hardy cherry - to go and look at the fruit folks, it's excellently. One of the things I like about carmine is that the the flesh pigment is red, so you don't need food coloring for your pies. There's also more anthocyanin in there. It's absolutely wonderful and the fruit quality is great. The bricks on these come in at about 14 bricks, which is a really high sugars for a tart, sherry, wonderful quality. So I hope you think about growing one of these Carmines in your yard and join us for some of our videos, where we show you some of our other new, exciting fruit coming out of Gurney's. Thanks very much.