North Star Sour Cherry
North Star Sour Cherry
History: North Star sour cherries were created by the University of Minnesota as part of an effort to create varieties that are more resistant to the cold. They were introduced in 1950 and recently have been growing in popularity as a backyard variety.
Why We Grow It: North Star is a sour cherry with bright red skin which darkens as it ripens. It has an excellent flavour. The trees have a compact and weeping growth habit, making them an attractive addition to your yard whether in bloom in spring or bearing fruit in the summer. They are also self-pollinating, very hardy, and resistant to leaf spot and brown rot.
Check our our blog post with some tasty sour cherry recipes!
Fruit Specs
Fruit Specs
Recommended Use: Fresh eating, baking
Fruit Size: Medium
Storage: Keeps about a week in the fridge.
Harvest: July - Late
Growing Specs
Growing Specs
Canadian Hardiness Zone: 3
Soil Preference: Sandy loam, loam, clay loam. Prefers average to moist conditions with well-drained soils, avoid planting anywhere that floods for more than two weeks in the spring.
Flowering Time: Late
Bloom Colour: White
Pollination Requirements: Self-pollinating, this variety will produce fruit without a cherry tree of a different variety but will produce more and better fruit if one is present. Sweet and Sour cherries cannot be relied upon to pollinate each other.
Sun/Shade Requirements:
Full sun (approx. 8-10 hours of sun daily)
General Growth Habits:
Cold hardy, compact and weeping growth habit, produces heavy crops. Resistant to brown rot and bacterial leaf spot.
Shipping vs. Pick Up
Shipping vs. Pick Up
CLICK HERE to see how shipping compares to pick up.
Shipping: Every year we ship thousands of trees across Canada (except BC due to CFIA regulations). We carefully bag roots in damp sawdust, then box them and send them out via courrier. CLICK HERE to see our shipping policy.
Pick-up: We also have thousands of trees picked up from our nursery each year. The pick-up options is free, though you must wait until you have been emailed a confirmation that your order is ready to pick up, which will have further information such as hours, locations, etc. We really appreciate if you can make an appointment to pick up, then we can be as organized as possible during our busy season.
Size at Purchase
Size at Purchase
Our grafted fruit trees are graded into three categories, and the size includes the rootstock:
- 50-80cm whip: may have some minor branching, this grade is like a "b-grade" size tree in industry standards; we include in this price category trees that are over 1m but have some scarring or mild crookedness.
- 1m+ whip: may have some minor branching, aka feathering. This is like a typical one-year whip in industry standards.
- 1m+ branched: these trees must be over a meter and have 3 or more branches 30cm or longer, as well as a central leader. They are essentially a two-year tree in industry standards.
- For stone fruits only - 1m+ whip/branched: We have combined these grades based on the way these trees grow and are grafted. Plums, apricots, cherries, and peaches naturally tend to grow more vigorously compared to apples and are more likely to form larger trees with more branches. However, we only chip bud them so they are a one-year old tree by industry standards. Apples and pears are partially bench grafted, and using the knip-boom method the grading becomes more complicated, hence the reason they are split into different grades.
Orders that are cancelled last minute due to size (being "to small"), will still incur the applicable cancellation fees if the trees are true to our grading standards as per the agreement of sale when the order was placed.