BlackGold™ Standard Sweet Cherry

I bought my cherry tree last spring. It was six ft. tall when I received it. Very healthy! Later in the summer the dreaded Asian Beatles attacked it. I hand picked them off each morning...but they stripped the tree of most leaves. I thought they might have killed it. But I was wrong, this spring it has lots of leaves and has gained another couple feet in height. I plan to cover my tree with small hole netting and place a beatle trap in my orchard.

This is a great cherry to plant where I live (northeast Wisconsin). First, for a sweet cherry, it is unusually hardy. My Black Gold tree made it through the winter of 2013-14, where we had 53 days that went below zero, and the coldest temp was 24 below. There was some damage to the tree -- one large branch and part of the trunk below that branch died. But I was still picking cherries from that tree in 2023, and that's about as hardy as a sweet cherry is going to be. Second, this variety of sweet cherry tastes reasonably good when it is less than fully ripe, unlike some other varieties that are quite tasteless until fully ripe. This is important because once cherries start turning red, you enter into a race with the robins to see who can get the cherries before they're gone. If you have to wait until full ripeness to enjoy them, you won't get any. With this tree, I get my share -- though the robins think that they deserve them all. I gave four stars instead of five because the fruit is not as large as I would expect a sweet cherry to be.

I received a beautiful tree that once planted, stood five feet tall. I am incredibly happy with our cherry tree which has been in the ground just five days and has buds/ little branches growing. Looking forward to the first fruits from our new cherry tree.